Mistaken Messages
by MistyMountainHop
Summary: Jackie longs for her soulmate to accept her, and Hyde hopes his will leave him alone because he's in love with someone else. A stack of mystical index cards lets them communicate with their as-yet unidentified soulmates. But the more their soulmates write, the less control Jackie and Hyde seem to have over their fate.
1. The Cosmic Tower

**Disclaimer:** _That '70s Show_ copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC.

 **Author's Note:** This story was written for the 2017 _Zenmasters Anthology_ on tumblr.

CHAPTER ONE  
 **THE COSMIC TOWER**

Hyde winced at his first taste of Orange Julius. Its Creamsicle flavor wasn't his favorite, but Kelso had paid for it. He'd also paid for Forman's and Fez's. It was a bribe to keep him company at the mall. Hyde would've preferred a cherry pop—or a Schlitz—especially considering his view. The Orange Julius store sat directly across from the Cheese Palace, where Jackie worked. Their table offered a clear line of sight, allowing them to spy on her every move.

Kelso elbowed Hyde in the ribs and nodded at Jackie. The skirt of her Cheese Maiden uniform covered only the top half of her thighs, leaving most of her legs exposed. She couldn't be warm in that thing. The last day of September had brought a chill to Point Place. Despite the mall's central heating system, the temperature inside resembled Alaska more than Tahiti.

"Man, Jackie's hot in that outfit," Kelso said, and Hyde's clutched the cup of his Orange Julius. The liquid inside stole what little warmth his fingers had. "And she doesn't know how good she has it, either. I bet the cold's brought out the best in her boobs, if you know what I mean." He pulled out his shirt to resemble two sharp points at his chest.

Forman gestured at him with a pen. "Put those away. I don't want to imagine Jackie's … _anything._ " He slid the pen behind his ear and rummaged in his jacket. "Why do these pockets have to be so big? Can't find—ah." He yanked out an index card, one of _those_ index cards, and the tiny hairs on Hyde's neck shot straight up, as if trying to escape his skin.

Kelso released his shirt, and the simulated nipples snapped back to his chest and flattened. "All I'm saying is the cold does bad stuff to a man's junk, and I—hey, Fez, could you quiet down? Trying to talk here."

Fez was slurping Orange Julius through a straw and making a ruckus. "So orange-y," he said after swallowing. He wiped his mouth of foam. "If only I could write a love note on one of these cups and have it _poof!_ to Rhonda."

"That would be awesome," Kelso said. "Anyway, modeling underwear in the cold's rough. Halverson's paying a lot of dough for my natural bulge, so the photographer's getting me an electric heater from Greene's Office Supply … but if I watch Jackie long enough, I won't need it." He gulped down some of his Orange Julius. "God, she is so hot in that outfit!"

Hyde couldn't disagree, but hearing it repeatedly from Kelso shoved energy into his knuckles. He cracked them, hoping to ease the tension in his hands. Jackie had dumped Kelso over a year ago, but Kelso seemed to think he had some claim on her. Didn't matter that she was less than interested. Every other month, Kelso tried to change that fact and failed.

"Can we move onto a more important subject?" Forman said and flicked his index card. "Donna and I are actual soulmates. Jackie's just a naïve, obnoxious girl you bamboozled into doing it with you."

"Yes." Fez pointed at Kelso with his Orange Julius then at Jackie across the mall. "You two mean nothing to each other. Move on!"

Kelso half-shrugged but stayed quiet. Jackie's break-up with him and Donna's break-up with Forman occupied opposite ends of the cosmos. Maybe Kelso was smart enough to recognize it, but Hyde wouldn't gamble even a belch on what Kelso might've understood.

"Can you believe it?" Forman said and continued to flick his index card. "I've used up four of these babies since we broke up. That's one thoughtful message a month, and she's giving me nothing."

"Not nothin'." Hyde swallowed his second sip of of Orange Julius and shuddered. He really hated how this crap tasted. "She gave you back your promise ring."

"Ha-ha. Not funny, Hyde." Forman tapped the index card against the table. "These cards are limited and irreplaceable. Doesn't she know that? I mean, how lucky is she that her soulmate lives next door to her?"

"How lucky is she? How lucky are you, man?" Hyde shifted his eyes in Jackie's direction but allowed himself only a glimpse. "You're all scrawny and Forman-y, and she's freakin' Donna."

Kelso licked Orange Julius foam from his upper lip. "Yeah. You could've ended up with Sister Mary-Ellen of Transylvania. Celibate, a vampire, and from another country. Jackpot!"

"Sure, Kelso. Sure." Forman quit treating the index card like a tambourine and studied it. "I've got only eleven of these left. I need to put something down that'll convince Donna she's an irrational maniac—who should accept my ring so we can get on with our lives." He grabbed the pen from behind his ear and pressed it to his lips. "What to write. What … to … write."

Hyde ran his tongue over his teeth. His last taste of Orange Julius lingered in his mouth, and he pushed his cup aside. Like the drink, the idea of soulmates had never appealed to him. Not everyone itched to be stuck with someone he didn't choose himself. Being born to a shitty set of parents was bad enough.

He and Donna had talked about the concept more than once. Her parents weren't soulmates, and neither were his, and their marriages croaked. But cosmically arranged relationships had an equal chance of dying. No partnership could survive without free will and good choices.

"Damn!" Forman grasped a fistful of his hair. He hadn't written a word on his index card. "I've already appealed to her logic and begged her to accept the fact we're meant to be. What else can I do?"

Fez held out his hand, palm-side up. "Give to Fez"

"I don't think so, pal. I'm not having some perverted message showing up in Donna's bathroom."

"Do you think I write my Rhonda perverted messages?" Fez slammed his cup on the table and stood. "You have insulted me, sir."

"But, Fez—"

"I said _insulted!_ " Fez marched out of the Orange Julius store and toward the escalators.

"Good job, Eric," Kelso said. "You pissed off Fez. You should tell Donna to have sex with him as an apology—oh!" He jabbed two fingers at Forman's index card. "Write that down! Your generosity'll get Donna to take you back and Fez to forgive you."

Forman looked straight at Hyde. "If you were me, what would you write?"

Hyde adjusted his shades on his face. He wouldn't write anything. He'd talk to her.

"Come on!" Kelso gestured at Forman's index card again. "Telling your soulmate to have sex with one of your friends is romantic."

"How could she put me in this position?" Forman said, still looking at Hyde. "How can she see a future without me? We grew up next door to each other, for God's sake! What is she thinking?"

"If being with her soulmate means being in prison," Hyde said and forced himself not to glance across the mall at Jackie, "them maybe she'd rather be free."

"You and your conspiracy theories."

Forman didn't get it, but Donna had flipped the cosmos the bird by breaking up with him. She'd tried to assert some control over her life while they were together. But he'd tried just as hard to seize that control for himself, so she wrenched it back. Hyde would've done the same as her had he been in that position.

Relationships, cosmically arranged or otherwise, gave no guarantees of a smooth ride. Being in one usually meant the opposite, but through compromise and mutual respect, people could end up pretty damn happy.

The Formans were his best example of that. They'd written messages to each other during World War II and the Korean War, experienced hardships that might've destroyed less solid marriages. Without knowing them, Hyde would've chucked his own index cards into the trash. His dad's soulmate turned out to be booze, and his mom's was a trucker who drove her out of Point Place for good.

"Hey," Kelso said to Forman, "let me borrow your pen."

"Are you gonna stick it in your butt crack?" Forman said.

"Not this time." Kelso produced a stack of index cards from his jeans pocket. Plastic-wrap surrounded it. "Bought these on the second floor, Greene's Office Supply." He ripped off the plastic wrap and held up the top card, as if comparing it to Forman's. "They're close enough, right? I'm gonna write Jackie a message and plant it somewhere in the Cheese Palace."

Forman handed Kelso his pen. "Go ahead. I'm completely blank."

"Cool." Kelso recited his message as he wrote it. _"Your soulmate's waiting for you in his underwear outside Halverson's."_

"Yeah, that'll work," Hyde said and cracked more energy from his knuckles. Kelso's scheme had become clear, but Jackie would never buy it. After she caught him cheating on her, he couldn't prove he was her soulmate, and she was done with him. That was one useful trick those cosmic index cards had performed: wising her up.

Kelso returned Forman's pen. "She won't be able to resist. Jackie was always on about _soulmate this_ and _soulmate that_ when we were together. She even thought I was the one who'd written those messages she got as a kid until..." He examined his palms. A pen mark stained one of them, and he wiped it off with spit and his finger. "Until I told her I lost the rest of my cards and couldn't write her new ones. But now—" he kissed his stack of index cards, "maybe she'll believe I finally found them and that I've been her soulmate all along."

"What actually happened to your cards?" Hyde said.

"Dog ate two. Baby brother got poo on one. Casey stole some, and I got no idea what he did with them. I set one on fire to see if something cool would happen. It didn't."

Forman's forehead wrinkled. "Did you ever write on any of them?"

"Sure I did! I asked, 'Are you hot?' And I got back a message, _'Il fait trente degrés._ ' Well, after seeing that alien language, I dropped my cards into my uncle's wood chipper. I'm not marrying an alien—" Kelso sliced his hand through the air and knocked over his Orange Julius cup. Liquid spilled onto the table in Forman's direction. "No way, no how."

"Kelso!" Forman grabbed napkins from the dispenser and scrambled to soak up the liquid oozing toward him.

"I don't want my kids having green skin and antennas," Kelso went on. "Plus, aliens gotta have some weird chemistry that'll shrivel my love gun."

Forman continued to sop up Orange Julius with napkins. "Got new for you. Your soulmate's not—"

"Leave it, Forman," Hyde said. Kelso had killed his chances with his soulmate. Lucky chick.

Kelso hiked his thumb at the Cheese Palace. "Okay, I got a barrel full of cheese and sausage to tip over. Need Jackie distracted while I put this card in the right place."

He raced from the Orange Julius store, bumping into several people in the process, but Hyde focused on Forman. Jackie wasn't desperate or stupid enough to believe Kelso's latest stunt. She'd be fine.

Forman started writing on his index card. He breathed heavily as he wrote, punctuated his last sentence with an obvious exclamation mark, and the card vanished in a burst of sparks.

Orange Julius patrons applauded, and a sneer tugged at Hyde's lips. Scrawling to one's soulmate in public shouldn't be a spectacle, but people enjoyed peeks into others' romantic lives, whether it was marriage proposals or cosmic messages.

"And I just wasted one of my cards." Forman touched the table. "It'll probably arrive all sticky, too. Damn Kelso and his clumsiness." He bit the cap of his pen. "I'm not using the ten I've got left. No, siree. I'll save those for my old age, for when I'm dying and Donna-less."

Hyde's sneer fully surfaced. All this angst about cosmic index cards was sickening. Each person got only thirty cards in a lifetime. They added up to sixty total between soulmates, but the entire system was bonkers. Forman needed to talk to Donna in person.

"How'd you use your cards before she dumped your ass?" Hyde said.

Forman slapped the table. "Why does everyone think she dumped me? It was mutual … due to her insanity." He snatched his Orange Julius cup and drank what was left, highlighting a major difference between him and Hyde. Forman indulged in bad flavors and bullshit.

"When Donna I first started dating," he said, "she asked if I thought we were soulmates. I said, 'Let's find out.' Neither of us had written on our cards yet. I'd loved Donna since I was three, so the cards didn't mean much to me, and she … well, let's just say she was a soulmate agnostic.

"Anyway, later that night, I wrote, 'Hey, pretty lady, why don't you come over to my house with that red shirt I like.' The index card zapped off my desk, and I thought I was high. I mean, how does that shit even happen? But she got the message. Boy, did she ever.

"She climbed the trellis beside my window, entered my room, and tossed the shirt at my face. 'If you like it so much,' she said, 'you wear it.'"

Hyde chuckled. "I remember that shirt." Donna had last worn it during a summer rainstorm. Its thin material got soaked, becoming virtually transparent. Her black bra was visible for all to ogle. She never put on that top again.

"I used my second card to apologize," Forman said. "Eight more were for apologies, too. I wrote an angry message on one, when she left me waiting at the Nugent concert. The other four were used for fun and games." He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. "How I miss our fun and games. I had it all, Hyde."

"That's your problem, man. ' _I_ had it all.' How's about Donna? Every time she tried to get a little for herself, you freaked on her."

Forman sat up straight. "What the hell do you know? When you've met your soulmate, you feel it here." His fist smashed the center of his chest. "When things are good between you, nothing feels better. And when things go bad, it hurts worse than you could possibly imagine. So before you pass judgment, why don't you write on one of your cards and see what happens, huh?"

"Nah. I'm cool."

"That's you..." Forman wiggled his fingers, "always 'cool'. You're so cool I bet you didn't even get any index cards. No magic materialization for you. Just a pile of empty space."

The muscles of Hyde's right forearm flexed, but otherwise he was motionless. A stack of index cards had appeared on his ninth birthday, in his sock drawer. He'd gleaned their significance from his parents, usually during their fights with each other. The rest he learned from TV, the Formans, and experience.

"But you're too cool to feel a real connection to anyone," Forman said and pushed himself from the table. "So it doesn't matter if you have a soulmate or not. You'll end up alone because that's what you want."

He left the Orange Julius store, but Hyde remained seated. A half-dozen tables stretched between two wooden support beams. They were all occupied, and the store's standing patrons periodically glanced at him. They probably hoped he'd vacate his chair, but he yanked the straw halfway out of his Orange Julius cup and rammed it back inside. He wasn't going anywhere yet.

Yards away, Kelso stood in the line for Jackie's cash register. The Cheese Palace was full of customers, an advantage he likely hadn't realized. Instead, he'd wait until he could implement Mission: _Tip Over the Cheese-and-Sausage Barrel_ with Jackie's full attention.

His idiocy was equal parts amusing and exasperating. Forman's tantrum was less amusing, but at least it hadn't been personal. Donna wasn't available, so he'd unleashed his anger on the most convenient target. It was a role Hyde seemed to play for a lot of people.

Years ago, he'd asked Edna about the index cards: couldn't she write Dad a message on one, telling him to come home? A few months earlier, Bud had hightailed it out of town with his secretary.

"Oh, honey, your father and I aren't soulmates," Edna said. "No one is. That's just a myth, like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy." She ruffled his hair, but the gesture lacked any affection. "Those cards you found in your room? I put them there. You might as well throw them out."

He ripped up three cards thanks to that conversation, but she'd lied to him before. Even at nine-years-old, he knew acting on her say-so wasn't a wise decision. The surviving index cards went into an empty shoebox, and he tried not to think about them.

But days after his tenth birthday, an index card appeared on his radio. He'd gotten up from his bed to crank the music louder. Edna was nailing the mailman in her bedroom, and their voices vibrated through Hyde's wall.

He picked up the index card and read it. _"Are you real?"_ it said. The handwriting was slightly loopy and more than a little messy.

Numbness spread through his chest at the question. Every time Edna brought a new sex partner into the house, Hyde asked himself the same thing.

He dragged the shoebox from under his bed. He grabbed one of his own index cards from it and wrote, _"I don't know."_

A flash of light consumed the card. The sight detonated a series of explosions in chest, disintegrating the numbness. Unless Edna had become a pyrotechnics expert in secret, cosmic index cards were very real.

He waited for a response, but days turned into weeks, and those became months. His handwriting might've been unintelligible. Or his message had scared off whoever had written him. He received no message back, not for another four years.

Over the period of a week, eight index cards showed up in random places: his school locker, Forman's bathroom, a comic book he stole. The writing on them was loopier than before, but it was also a lot tidier.

 _"I'm _. What's your name?"_ the first of the eight messages said. _"I live _. Where do you live?"_ His soulmate might've been trying to be mysterious with those blank spaces, but he doubted it.

The next two messages though, revealed his soulmate's likes and dislikes in tiny handwriting. She'd utilized both sides of the cards, sharing her favorite color and food. What TV shows she watched and terrible music she listened to. He learned about her dream of being a model or an actress. But info about her parents' jobs was blanked out, as was her birthday. Anything that would help him identify her in a concrete way.

The cosmos couldn't let this damn process be simple. It had some sick need for humans to bumble through their existence.

His soulmate's fourth message apologized to him and said, _"What do you like? What_ _are_ _you like? Tell me everything."_

The fifth message came two days later, when he'd written nothing back. _"Are you getting my cards? Did they get lost? Are you illiterate? If you_ _are_ _illiterate, you can draw me pictures. Oh, but if you can't read, you won't know what I just wrote."_

The sixth message came later that night. _"Am I annoying you?"_ it said. _"My friends say I talk too much, but I really want to know what you're like. Who are you? Here's how I envision our wedding..."_

He skimmed her lengthy description of a wedding that would never happen. Each of her messages was a paper cut, reminding him of what he didn't want to consider. He'd just started high school. His voice had broken, unlike his friends', and he was taller than them, too. His sideburns clinched the image he hoped to project, that he was older and more experienced than a freshman.

Living in the present offered dozens of distractions, like making out with sophomore girls, getting hand jobs from junior girls, and being sucked off by senior girls. The future offered only pain.

He hadn't planned on ever writing his soulmate again. But her ideal wedding forced him to think about adulthood, about the high probability of leaving his wife or being left by her. He couldn't let his soulmate live in a fantasy, and he wrote her one word.

 _"Stop."_

Her seventh index card appeared the next day, in his Algebra I textbook. _"You're real!"_ it said. _"We're going to meet someday. I just know it! And it'll be soon. Aren't you excited?"_

His message clearly hadn't gotten through to her, but he wrote no follow-up response.

 _"Okay, I'll leave you alone..."_ her eighth index card said, _"for now. But we're meant to be. It's destiny, soulmate. My mom says you're probably young and still think girls have cooties. So I'll let you grow up a little. But you better hurry. I'm very pretty, and I'm only going to get prettier, which means lots of boys will be after me."_

It was the last message from her that year, but it stuck with him. She had a giant ego, and she believed in the bullshit called destiny. He was all about free will and choices. Soulmate or not, they weren't compatible.

For more than one reason.

Acrash drew his gaze to the Cheese Palace. Kelso had finally knocked over the cheese-and-sausage barrel. He darted to the back of the shop as customers scattered to other parts of the mall.

Sausage and cheese had spilled onto the floor. Dozens of of links and wedges. Jackie began to pick them up, and Hyde chewed on his straw until his temples hurt. He'd let that crap happen to her, was letting Kelso hide that index card on a shelf.

He jumped from the table, but Kelso had already run off. Hyde tossed his cup and straw into the garbage, and an Orange Julius patron whispered, "About time."

She was right. He'd stayed put too long, but he strolled to the Cheese Palace. Sprinting like the place had caught fire would reveal more than he should.

In front of the register counter, Jackie was on her hands and knees, gathering cheese and sausage into a pile. Her cleavage peeked out from the top of her blouse, and his neck heated up. Seeing her like that inspired a fantasy that clenched his stomach, but he ejected it from his skull. She deserved better than a visual groping. Far better.

He crouched beside her, picked up a cheese wedge, and her gaze snapped to his. "Steven? What are you doing?"

"What's it look like? Joining the Havarti party."

"Shouldn't you be laughing at me instead? That idiot Michael pretended to dance with the barrel, and here I am. "

"I'm laughing on the inside."

"Sure," she said, and together they dropped cheese and sausage into the barrel. "Seriously, why are you helping me?"

He bent down and reached for a wedge of Gouda. "Made a bad choice. Making a better one."

They finished filling up the barrel without talking. She wiped her hands on her skirt, and he moved to leave, but she grasped the hem of his denim jacket. "What bad choice?" she said.

"Could've stopped Kelso." He rolled his shoulders. Her grip on his jacket had created a slight pressure on them, but the usual heaviness of his body was gone.

Nope. It was more than that. He was freakin' floating on the inside. Helium must've been injected into his bones. "Knew what he was planning," he said and held onto the register counter for stability. "Sorry."

"Now you're apologizing? Take off your sunglasses"

"Not happening."

"Fine." She released his jacket and cupped the sides of his face. "What's your name? Who sings for Led Zeppelin? When is Valentine's Day?"

"I didn't hit my head, if that's what you're getting at."

He fought the urge to shut his eyes. Her palms on his cheeks, her lips inches from his mouth—it was too damn much. Everything he was ached to be with her, but the feeling wasn't mutual.

She didn't want him. She'd told him as much, and unlike Forman, he wouldn't coerce the girl he more than liked to act against herself.

"Kelso—" he said, but the shop's manager disrupted his confession. He'd charged out of the refrigerated storage room, and Jackie let go of Hyde's face.

"Jackie, we don't have enough inventory to refill the barrel," the manager said. He was a short, skinny guy named Todd, who couldn't be older than twenty. His cheeks were red, probably from being in the storage room. "We'll have to sell the tainted cheese at half-price and say it's a special end-of-September sale. Get on it."

Hyde's jaw tensed at his tone, but Jackie retrieved a marker and a piece of paper from the register counter. Behind her, Todd reorganized shelves of cheese and sausage. His blond head was the perfect size and shape for a punching bag, but Hyde shoved his fists into his jeans pockets. Jackie never hesitated to speak up when she felt wronged. If Todd's attitude bothered her, she would've reacted.

"What's this?" Todd plucked an index card from between two plastic-wrapped salamis. He read the card to himself and tapped Jackie on the shoulder. "I've finally received my first soulmate message. My soulmate is in this very mall!" He waved the card in the air. "Glorious day! I'll be back."

He rushed from the Cheese Palace to the nearest stairwell. He'd obviously found Kelso's index card, and Hyde smirked. If fate lacked a sense of justice, at least it had sense of humor.

"Can you believe that?" Jackie said. She'd finished the _September Cheese: Half-Off_ sign and taped it to the barrel. "Even he has a soulmate who cares."

"Sure yours does, too," Hyde said.

"Right. My soulmate's an ass."

"Mine's an egomaniac. Guess we both picked the short straw."

She went to the cash register and clutched the lacing of her bodice. "I can't believe Michael. He makes such a mess of everything!" She undid the bow of the lacing and redid it, adding two unnecessary knots. "You know, I actually tried to save myself for my soulmate. But then Michael came along, and I thought he..." She inhaled deeply. "Anyway."

A woman stepped in front of Hyde to the register, and Jackie greeted her. "Welcome to the Cheese Palace. How can I help you?"

"I need a non-salty cheese," the woman said, and Jackie led her to a shelf. She explained the flavors and textures of different cheeses. One was nutty, another was buttery, another was herbaceous, but the woman chose quickly.

Hyde stayed out of the way as Jackie rang up the woman's purchase. He should've left altogether, but Jackie needed to be aware of Kelso's latest plot. Hyde's silence equaled complicity, a mistake he wouldn't repeat.

"Kelso bought himself a bunch of index cards," he said once the woman was gone. "He's gonna try to convince you he's your soulmate again. The card your boss found was from him."

Jackie stepped out from the register, crossed her arms over her chest, and leaned her hip against the counter. "He'll fail, but thank you for 'ratting him out'."

Even though Hyde's shades, the light of the Cheese Palace were bright, like that of a police interrogation room. She'd just made reference to his silence on Kelso's cheating. Laying traps to get him caught hadn't been enough.

"I'm no rat," he said. "I've got my loyalties figured out. What Kelso did to you last year—I should've been straight with you about it."

The corners of her lips ticked up, not quite a smile. "Yes, you should have, but I might not have believed you anyway. Seeing it for myself hurt, but it was for the best." That not-quite smile seized her mouth, and he flinched. She appeared genuinely happy. "I thought about writing to my soulmate after I broke up with Michael … but then you and I happened."

His lungs struggled to suck in enough air, and he rubbed his jaw with his knuckles. "No, we didn't."

"Steven, I know you felt nothing when we kissed, but it wasn't the same for me. I..." She uncrossed her arms, peered up at the ceiling, and laughed. "I shouldn't have felt that way with you. Because you and I aren't soulmates, but I did—" she looked at him again, eyes mirroring the confusion infecting him, "and I still have no idea what it means."

"What are you tellin' me, Jackie?"

She moved to a nearby shelf and smoothed wrinkles from its picnic-print cloth. "Our kiss was more than hot, but you aren't my soulmate. So I lied."

Hyde's arms grew heavy at his sides. His legs were no better. The iron in his blood must've solidified and was weighing him down. "Who gives a shit who your soulmate is, man? Be with whoever you wanna be with."

"I give a shit." She went to another shelf but ended up adding more wrinkles to its cloth. "A soulmate's the only one who won't cheat on you or abandon you. I need that guarantee."

"Nothing's a guarantee. You see Forman and Donna lately?"

"They're both morons, but they'll get back together eventually. It's destiny."

 _Destiny._ The word thinned his blood and allowed him to step toward her. "It'll be their choice to get back together. Not fate. Just like it was their choice to get together in the first place."

She turned from the shelf, fists clenched. "Whatever, Steven. This conversation's pointless. Our opinions are too different. Mine is right, and yours is wrong."

"Egomaniac."

"I am not your soulmate, so don't try to flatter me, you ass."

He laughed in spite of his frustration. They suffered from the same freakin' affliction: stubbornness.

"Steven..." Her fists unclenched as he continued to laugh. "Would you get out of here?" she said with a giggle. "I have to work." She slapped him on the arm. "Please?"

"Yeah, I'm goin'."

He left the Cheese Palace faster than he'd arrived, propelled forward by their disparate beliefs. Nothing else he could do.

* * *

The bare bulb of Hyde's room provided the same amount of light no matter the hour, making night and day indistinguishable. Inside, that distinction was fading away, too. The lengthening nights of fall had invaded his cells, creating an inescapable chill.

He shivered on the Formans' ottoman with his beat-up shoebox. He'd brought the box from his house when he'd moved in with the Formans'. Twenty-five of his index cards remained in it, and he took one out.

 _"Fell in love with someone,"_ he wrote on the card. _"Probably won't work out, but if you're waiting around for me to show up, don't. No such thing as destiny, so don't use me as an excuse to not live your life. You can find someone better. Someone great."_

He stopped writing. The index card glittered on top of the shoebox and dematerialized. His soulmate had to learn the truth. She could be imprisoning herself in a cosmic tower, hoping he'd arrive with the keys. He didn't have the means to free Jackie, but his message might spur his soulmate to free herself.

* * *

Jackie slid into bed, but the lamp on her nightstand was still on. She reached toward it, accidentally jostled the lampshade, and something bit into her wrist. She checked her skin. It wasn't bleeding, but an index card lay flat on her nightstand. Her clumsiness must have dislodged it from the lamp.

She snatched the card as her pulse tightened. Her soulmate hadn't written her in years, and his last message wouldn't inspire any romance novels. But maybe he'd finally matured enough to try to connect with her.

"This better be your pledge of undying devotion to me," she whispered to the index card. She was sacrificing a lot for this boy. Her time with Steven today had reminded her just how much, but her soulmate picked a perfect moment to write her again. It was a reminder to trust in destiny.

 _"Fell in love with someone,"_ the message began, and her eyes unfocused. She couldn't have read that right. She blinked, brought the card directly under the lamp for more light, and mouthed the letters that composed each word: _"F. E. L. L. I. N. L. O. V. E. W. I. T. H. S. O. M. E. O. N. E."_

Her heart throbbed in her fingers, and each beat obscured her sight, but she read the rest of the message: _"Probably won't work out, but if you're waiting around for me to show up, don't. No such thing as destiny, so don't use me as an excuse to not live your life. You can find somebody better. Somebody great."_

She fanned herself with the index card. Her cheeks were burning, as were her eyes. He hadn't fallen in love with someone else. He couldn't have.


	2. Withering Opportunities

**Disclaimer:** _That '70s Show_ copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC.

CHAPTER TWO  
 **WITHERING OPPORTUNITIES**

Jackie stayed up past three a.m., writing responses to her soulmate. Her eyes were raw and blurry, and her hand cramped up by the time she was done. Her handwriting had probably become illegible, but she'd used twelve of her index cards, leaving only nine.

 _"How dare you fall in love with someone else!"_ her first message stated in big, thick letters.

 _"You're choosing a relationship that 'probably won't work out' over me?"_ another message said. _"But I'm giving you a guarantee! I promise you I'm smarter, prettier, and kinder than whoever that undeserving tramp is."_

 _"I already love you,"_ her final message said. _"You don't ever have to question that. I won't leave you. Just tell me you'll give us a chance."_

She lay down above her covers and waited for a message back. An unrealistic expectation, considering how late at night she'd written. But her soulmate didn't necessarily live in Wisconsin. He could be anywhere English was spoken or taught.

Her eyes fluttered closed, but she obsessed over her own messages, scrutinizing every word until a heavy knock on the bedroom door shocked her out of it. "Jackie?" he mom's voice said. "Jackie, honey, we're going to be late for church."

Jackie's eyelashes were sticky with dried tears, and she clutched her pounding head. She'd fallen asleep but had no memory of it. The last eight hours must've been a nightmare. A dream fueled by the worst fears in her subconscious, but her index cards were sprawled on her comforter. Her right hand had ink stains on it, and her soulmate's horrifying message sat beside her pillow.

"Jackie!" her mom shouted through the door.

"I'm getting dressed!" Jackie shouted back, and her head throbbed harder. She gathered up her index cards, and the awful one from her soulmate, and put them in a small metal safe. The safe went deep into her closet, but it belonged in hell.

* * *

The aspirin Jackie took at home kicked in at church. The pounding in her head abated enough for the priest's words to reach her, but they couldn't seep past her thoughts. She needed a friend right now, not a preacher. Teammates from the cheer squad were too far away, scattered among the pews with their families. Donna was even farther at St. Patrick's, a Catholic church. Fez's Baptist host parents dragged him to their church, and the Formans attended Presbyterian Mass, not Episcopal.

Steven wouldn't be with Eric's family, though, listening to that weird Pastor Dave. More likely, he was still asleep, but talking to him would be a waste. He'd just gloat about his philosophy being right, that having a soulmate was no guarantee of eternal, faithful love.

She grabbed a copy of _The Book of Common Prayer_ from the pew in front of her. No one in church to talk to except God. He was the best listener anyway, despite that His answers were often hard to understand.

The priest led the congregation in Prayers for the World. Jackie searched for that section in her book, but it was conveniently bookmarked.

By an index card.

Familiar handwriting was scrawled across it, her soulmate's, and her heart pounded like her head had earlier. But she tucked the index card into her purse. Reading it now would be stupid. If her soulmate had written more garbage, she'd become a crying, screaming mess. That wasn't a side of herself she wanted to show in church, especially with her mom and half the cheer squad present.

But the priest's sermon became a jumble of sounds. Jackie dribbled wine on her blouse during communion, and her mom scolded her on the drive home, another jumble of sounds.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," her mom said once they were in their parlor. She caressed the side of Jackie's face, and Jackie took some comfort in it. "Something's wrong, isn't it? I've been so distracted by trying to close that deal on Pine Street that I've barely paid any attention to you." She grasped both of Jackie's hands warmly. "It's tough being the only parent while your dad's away, but I shouldn't have spoken to you like that."

"It's fine," Jackie said. " _I'm_ fine. I'm just … staying up way too late, gossiping on the phone."

The nape of her neck heated up. If she didn't leave the house soon, she might confess what happened, that her soulmate had fallen in love with someone else. Her parents couldn't learn about that. Her relationship with Michael had damaged her enough in their eyes.

Her dad, despite his frequent business trips, loved her mom deeply. They were soulmates, and neither of them would accept that Jackie might end up with someone God hadn't chosen for her.

Sweat broke out on her hairline. She cupped the nape of her neck, and it warmed her cold palm. "Can I go to Donna's?"

" _May I,_ and yes." Her mom brushed her fingers through Jackie's hair. "You know you can talk to me about anything, right?"

Jackie offered a cheerleader smile, toothy and fake. _"Of course!"_ it said silently, and her mom let her go.

Twenty minutes later, Jackie arrived by bus at Donna's house. She went to the backyard, but the patio door slammed open before she reached it. Donna barreled outside, running so fast that her red hair flew behind her like a flag.

"Donna, perfect!" Jackie said. "We need to talk."

Donna didn't slow her pace. "Sure, but we're doing it over at Eric's."

"Eric's? Did you two make up?"

"No. His last message told me not to bother going to the basement until I come to my senses and take him back. So I'm going to watch the Packers-Lions game in his living room."

Jackie needed two strides for Donna's one, but she kept up as her purse swung at her side. "Good plan … if your goal is to antagonize him."

"It is."

They moved beyond the Pinciottis' hedges and entered the Formans' driveway. It was devoid of people, but the Formans' kitchen was equally empty. Only a few dishes soaked in the sink, and Donna pushed open the swinging door. Jackie followed her into the living room, but the lights were off. No one seemed to be home at all.

"Where's Red?" Donna said. She turned on the lights and the TV. "The game's gonna start any minute."

"Who cares?" Jackie pulled Donna toward the couch. "My soulmate gave me the kiss-off last night."

"What?"

"He said he's in love with someone else and told me to move on."

"Oh, my God..." Donna said with a grin, "that's great!"

Jackie strangled the strap of her purse with both hands. "Excuse me?"

"Jackie, don't you see? We're not chained to our soulmates." Donna flung her jacket behind her, but it sailed past it the couch and hit the staircase balustrade. "If yours can fall in love with someone who isn't you, it means I can fall in love with someone who isn't Eric." She stamped her foot on the floor. "Do you hear that, Foreskin? I can fall in love with whoever I want!" She stamped her foot on the floor again.

Jackie removed her own jacket and laid it on the couch's backrest. "You're missing the point, Donna! What my soulmate said is ridiculous and infuriating, but it was also really sweet—which is unacceptable. It only makes me want him more, and now I can't have him."

Donna sat and peered up at her. "What did he say?"

"That I shouldn't use him as an excuse not to live my life. That I can find someone better than him, someone great." She tossed her purse to the floor. "What a jerk!"

"Wow," Donna said. "That is _so_ not Kelso."

Jackie picked up her purse as her cheeks started to tingle, and her throat closed up. She sat on the couch and swallowed a few times, but her voice came out hoarsely. "My soulmate's too complicated to be Michael. He said he doesn't think a relationship will even work out with the person he's in love with."

She rubbed her cheeks to get them to stop tingling, but her throat started to hurt. Tears would come soon if she didn't get some comfort. She leaned her head on Donna's shoulder, and Donna slid her arm around Jackie's back. "Why won't he give me a chance?" Jackie said. " _Us_ a chance?"

"Maybe he's afraid. The idea of being locked into something is scary."

"But it's _me!_ I'm not scary."

"You kind of are."

Jackie lifted her head. "You take that back."

"Jackie, how many cards have you used so far?"

"Twenty-one—"

"Twenty-one!" Donna laughed. "Twenty-one … my God."

Jackie pinched Donna's wrist, twisting the skin.

"Jackie!" Donna withdrew her arm from Jackie's back, but that was better than the laughter.

"When I dated Michael," Jackie said, "I used none of my cards. The last one I'd gotten from my soulmate had said, 'Stop.' That's it. 'Stop.' Michael told me the soulmate stuff made him uncomfortable, and I was afraid of scaring him off. I stupidly believed every word he said, but at least it kept me from wasting any cards on him."

"What about with Hyde?" Donna said. "You were pretty obsessed with him for a while."

Jackie cleared her throat to soften her voice. She had to sound as natural as she could, to give Donna some truth but not the whole truth. "I did think Steven was my soulmate during that time, okay? It's embarrassing, and I'd rather not talk about it, but I never told him. I pretended like it was just a school-girl crush." She fiddled with the zipper of her purse. "So, no. I didn't write him anything, either."

Donna glanced at the TV. "Oh, man, there's the kickoff, but..." She looked at Jackie again. "Did you use all twenty-one cards in one night? Is that why your soulmate told you to stop?"

"Less than ten got him to say that. But after what he wrote me last night, I tried to get through to him. I needed twelve cards to explain how wrong he is."

"Did he write you back at all?"

"Yes."

"And?"

Jackie unzipped her purse and plucked out the index card. "I found it at church. I haven't read it yet." She shoved the card at Donna. "You read it."

Donna took the card. "Are you sure?"

"Do it!" Jackie said and shut her eyes.

Donna exhaled a noisy breath. "'You don't love me,'" she read out loud. "'You don't know me, and if you did— trust me—you'd be thanking me right now. I'm sorry I can't be what you want. But if it makes you feel any better, I'm not gonna get what I want, either.'"

Jackie opened her eyes. Donna's face was flushed, and Jackie said. "Is that all?"

"No. I just, uh … the Packers have to win today. They had such a crushing defeat almost two weeks ago. The Raiders—"

"Would you shut up about football and finish reading what's on the card?" Jackie's fingers itched. If an arm ever deserved to be pinched black and blue, it was Donna's. Sports should not inspire more emotion than a best friend's suffering, but for Donna it obviously did.

"Sorry." Donna touched her knuckle to the corner of her eye, as if wiping sand from it, and she continued reading. "'I do crappy in school. Not 'cause I'm not smart. 'Cause there's no point. Gonna end up pumping gas if I'm lucky.'" Her voice wavered. The Packers must have scored a touchdown. "'I'll probably end up in jail or dead before I hit twenty-five, so I'm doing you a favor.'"

She flipped the index card over, and Jackie chewed the inside of her cheek. "There's more?" Jackie said.

"Apparently," Donna said. "'You want to waste your cards calling me an asshole, go ahead. It's not something I don't already know. But do me a favor and save one. When you find the guy who's right for you, use the last card to tell me. Wouldn't mind knowing you're happy.'"

Jackie's throat grew thick with pain, but she managed to speak. "That is the most he's ever told me about himself."

"This guy..." Donna passed the index card to her, "he really is complicated."

"He's an ass," Jackie said and slapped the center of her chest. She had to pulverize the despair colonizing her heart. "If he were here, I'd give him the biggest paper cut ever—in a very unpleasant area—with this card." She waved the card in the air before dropping it into her purse. "If he's so stupid to fall in love with someone who isn't me, then he doesn't deserve me."

"Yeah." Donna turned toward the TV. "You'd think God would make soulmates smarter. Mine expects me to be this subservient housewife, who gives up all her hopes and dreams so 'her man' can fulfill his." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, I'm not gonna be some barefoot baby-maker. I'm gonna have a career and travel, and if I ever do get married, it'll be to someone who sees me as an equal, not as a someone put on Earth only to serve his needs."

Jackie rubbed Donna's wrist where she'd pinched it earlier. Donna did feel sympathy for her after all. She was just trying to hide it.

"That's right," Jackie said. "You'll earn enough money to pay for a cook, a maid, and a nanny like my parents did. My mom's one of the most successful real-estate agents in Kenosha County. She didn't give up anything to become someone's wife, and neither should you."

"Thank you! I'm glad somebody else in this town gets it … but I am surprised it's you."

Jackie huffed out a breath. "At first, when my parents cut me off from my credit cards, I was pissed. But they wanted me to learn what earning money feels like, and I'll tell you—even though I smell like cheese four days out of the week—getting my paycheck feels great. Especially because I'm not spending it on anyone but myself."

Donna chuckled. "Kelso screwed himself over in more than one way, huh?"

"He did, and so did my soulmate." Jackie drummed her fingers on her knees. Her soulmate had asked for a message to let him know she was happy. He wouldn't get that message any time soon. She'd write it to him in her old age, but she refused to wait that long to get her happiness.

"You know what?" she said. "I was gonna go to the Piggly Wiggly and spend my latest paycheck there, but I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna wallow in misery, eating beef jerky and chocolate cake in the dark. I'm gonna put myself out there and French the next guy I see."

"Or," Donna said, "you could take this opportunity to get to know yourself and, like, be comfortable with who you are."

"Donna, I already love myself. I'm very lovable. But I've been without a boyfriend for over a year. Hoping my soulmate will wise up is pointless, so—"

She stopped talking as the kitchen door swung open. Mr. Forman entered the living room with a beer in his hand, and Donna elbowed her in the side. "There's your guy," Donna whispered. "Get to Frenching."

Jackie shuddered. "Ew, no!"

"Donna, how we doing?" Mr. Forman said.

"Packers got to the third down. They're looking good."

He sat in his pea-green chair and sipped his beer. "What a day for the Toyota's battery to run out of juice. Damn Japanese cars. Pastor Dave gave me a boost after church. Truly, he did the Lord's work today."

Jackie slid the index card from her purse and read it over. Mr. Forman and Donna's football chatter grew intense, but it faded against the force of her soulmate's words. For someone who insisted destiny didn't exist, he seemed certain about his future, that nothing good waited for him.

The kitchen door swung open again. Pastor Dave walked through it, carrying salsa, two bags of Fritos corn chips, and two large plastic bowls. "Sorry I'm late," he said with his lilting voice. "There was a long line at the Piggly Wiggly. What did I miss?"

"First quarter's finished," Mr. Forman said. "Packers are up by seven."

"Ah, seven. One of the holiest numbers." Pastor Dave dropped the salsa, chips, and bowls onto the coffee table. He sat on the couch, crowding Jackie a bit, and began to organize the snacks.

Donna poked Jackie's leg. "He's single. Make your move—"

"I am so out of here." Jackie snatched her jacket from the couch. Donna's sense of humor needed an overhaul. "I hope the Packers lose!" she said and headed for the kitchen.

"Jackie!" Donna shouted after her, laughing. "Jackie, I was kidding!"

But Jackie wasn't kidding about Frenching someone. She'd move on but not because her soulmate told her to. Moving on was what she wanted to do.

* * *

The crowd at Milwaukee County Stadium roared from the basement TV. Forman, Kelso, and Fez cheered and booed at different plays, but Hyde shifted his attention to the wooden staircase. Jackie was skipping down it, jacket slung over her shoulder and purse clutched at her side.

She couldn't be here to watch the Packers-Lions game. Maybe she'd come on behalf of Donna, to perform an errand of mercilessness. Whatever her plan was, Hyde would forfeit watching the game if she asked. Fooling around or shooting the shit, didn't matter which. As long as it was with her.

A month ago, before the school year started, she'd given him a gift. A copy of _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance._ "For helping me out with Laurie," she'd said in his room. "I never properly thanked you for it—or for everything else. Instead, I got carried away with..."

"Hunting me down like a bear?" he said, running his thumb along the book's spine.

She squinted and cocked her head to the side, as if silently calling him a moron. But her chest rose with a breath, and she gestured at the book. "Anyway, I read this myself after our _Zen_ lessons. I think you'll appreciate it."

"Cool." He flipped to the book's table of contents, and a grin slid over his face. He'd heard about _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance._ Been interested in reading it,but he never bothered to borrow it from the library. He'd also never told Jackie how much her gift meant to him.

But he could make the opportunity now. She was standing by his chair, close enough for him to smell her floral perfume. Her peasant dress showed off her body innocently, with its bell sleeves and laced-up bodice. Part of the flowing skirt had landed on his boot. but he forced his attention to the football game.

 _"Thanks for the book, man. I really dug it."_ That was all he need to say, but he'd become the lazy, ungrateful bastard his mom always claimed he was. Opportunities withered in front of him. He cultivated nothing, so he would have nothing.

"Jackie," Kelso said from the couch. His left eye was swollen shut, and he thrust a finger at it. "Are you here to apologize?"

"For what?" she said.

Fez patted the lawn chair's armrests. "Oh, let me tell it!"

"Wait a second," Forman said. "Something's strange here. Jackie, you entered the basement from the kitchen. You don't do that unless..." He jumped from the couch. "Donna!"

He shoved Kelso's knees out of the way, raced past him, and sprinted up the stairs.

Hyde caught a glimpse of Jackie in the corner of his eye. She'd turned to look at him, and he briefly met her gaze. Her expression seemed to reflect his thoughts. If Donna were upstairs, Forman wouldn't make their situation better. Not unless his synapses had reversed polarity.

Fez gestured at Kelso. "Do you see that purple stain on his beautiful face?"

"What, did Michael run into a door again?" Jackie said.

"More like a fist," Hyde said.

Kelso glared at him with his unswollen eye. "Shut up, Hyde! I'm the one who got hurt, so I'm the one who gets to tell her how." He rose from the couch, stepped forward, and his shin collided with the spool table. "Ow!"

"Maybe you should sit down," Fez said. "You have only one eye—"

Hyde chuckled. "No, man. Let him walk. See what else he bumps into."

"Ooh." Fez clapped his hands together. "Like TV?"

"Yup. Today's show: _Lack of Depth Perception._ "

Kelso stumbled to the end of the couch closest to Jackie. "Who needs depth perception when you move like a gazelle?" He tried to sit on the armrest, but his ass hit air, and he dropped to the floor.

Hyde and Jackie both burst out in laughter. He leaned toward her in his chair, and she clasped his shoulder, as if using him for support. Being with her shouldn't feel this good. They were sharing a simple moment, but it outstripped any high he'd ever experienced.

"It's not funny!" Kelso shouted from the floor. "Jackie, I left you—I mean, _wrote_ you a message. You know, one of those soulmate deals. And you gave it to your boss?"

"I didn't get any message," she said amid a few straggling giggles.

"But I left it for you—I mean, it should've shown up somewhere that resembles a part of me, like behind some salami."

Fez wagged a finger at Kelso, whose ass was still on the floor. "Soulmate messages can show up anywhere," Fez said. "It has nothing to do with how your body looks."

Jackie fluffed her hair and scoffed. "And if it did, any message you wrote me would've appeared by the cornichons."

"No part of me is kerneled!" Kelso said.

"Cornichons are small French pickles," Fez said.

"I'm not French, either."

"Whatever, Michael." Jackie pointed at Hyde's room. "Steven, can we—"

Kelso grabbed onto the couch and pulled himself to his feet. "Your boss thought that card was for him! He got so pissed when he saw me in my underwear that he sucker-punched me in the face. I won't be able to model for a week!"

She stepped toward him. "It's your own fault! Who asked you to leave a message in the Cheese Palace?"

"I didn't leave it! It was God."

Hyde stood from his chair. "Okay, Kelso. Enough." He glanced at the TV. The Packers were ahead by seven and would likely score another touchdown in the next two minutes, but he focused on Jackie. "Yeah, we can."

"Great." She led the way to his room. He followed, heart pumping hard. He'd told her about Kelso's message yesterday, but she hadn't ratted him out. She'd acted like it was new info, demonstrating her loyalty.

"Do you mind if we lock the door?" she said once they were in his room. "I'd like some privacy, and you never know with those idiots."

"No problem," he said but turned on the bare bulb first. Groping in the dark for the cord was a skill he hadn't perfected. "Man, I'm glad we've got a few minutes to talk." He locked the door and hooked his shades on his shirt collar. "Been meaning to tell you—"

She lunged at him. Her arms coiled around his shoulders, and her lips smashed into his mouth. He careened sideways before he could think, slammed into the Forman's old armchair, and his momentum pushed him over the armrest.

He landed safely on the cushion but in an awkward position. He twisted himself around as thoughts twisted around his skull, and she crawled on top of him. Her hands grasped the armrest behind his head. He was effectively trapped, but she kissed him more gently this time.

His lips responded. Blood pooled into his stomach, but he dug his left boot into the floor and used the traction to slip out from under her. "What the hell is goin' on?" he said.

She copied his maneuver and got off the armchair. "You were right. Soulmates are bullshit. I'm not asking for anything serious. Just be with me."

He stepped back as she approached him. Her fingers hooked over the nape of his neck, and she pressed kisses into his sideburn and jawline. He wanted this to happen, wanted her, but he kept moving backward. "Jackie—"

His calves hit the tattered ottoman. He sank onto it, and she dropped onto his lap. Pleasure hit every nerve as she sucked on his neck, but it decayed into misery. "Never told you how much I appreciated the book."

Her mouth left his skin. "What?"

" _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance._ Read it. Enjoyed it. You're..." He wrapped his arms around her waist. "I appreciate you, all right?."

"An incredibly sexy girl's sitting on your lap. Of course you appreciate me."

"No, man. I..." His shoulders sagged, and his arms slipped off her. "Damn it. Go under my cot—"

She stayed on his lap but shrank back, like he'd suggested she get into an iron maiden. Eloquence wasn't one of his strengths, even on the best of days. But he was exhausted from fighting her, from fighting himself, and words rusted in his throat. "There's an old shoebox under there. Pull it out."

Her eyebrows rose, but she did as he said. She sat on his cot with the box and shook dust from her hands. "What's in here?"

"Open it."

"If I do, will you start responding when I kiss you? Or am I too much of a cyst?"

He scrubbed a hand over his face. "You're fuckin' beautiful, okay? Just open the box."

"I don't respond well to sarcasm, Steven. Or to orders."

"Not being sarcastic," he said. But her kisses offered less than he could accept, and she had the right to know why. "Would you please open the box?"

"Fine." She removed the battered box top and took out a pile of index cards. "Your soulmate cards?"

"There's another pile stuffed into a paper bag."

"I thought that was your stash."

"It's a stash of somethin'."

She returned his soulmate cards to the box and grabbed the paper bag. She dumped its contents onto the cot, and index cards spilled onto his blanket.

"From your...?" she said but didn't wait for him to answer. She picked up the card nearest to her, and her eyes widened. "How did you get these?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," he said. "Don't have any clue how this soulmate crap works."

"You're saying these are _yours_?"

"Unfortunately." He began to massage his neck, but his skin was damp where her mouth had been. "Told her to look for someone else. She's not thrilled about it, but what am I gonna do?" He wound a loose thread from the ottoman around his ring finger. "Love's never been my deal, but when you—"

She leapt off his cot and jetted from his room. A few seconds later, the basement door slammed shut. She was gone, and he shoveled his soulmate's cards into their paper bag.


	3. Lunacy

**Disclaimer:** _That '70s Show_ copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC.

CHAPTER THREE  
 **LUNACY**

Hyde bashed the flippers of _Travel Time,_ but his last ball fell into the drain. He'd spent his last quarter on The Hub's pinball machine, and he wasn't in the mood to get more. All day at school, he'd deflected gossip about the hickey Jackie gave him. Broken blood vessels freckled the skin below his jawline. He didn't wear turtlenecks as a rule, so the hickey was on display for all to gawk at.

Forman had interrogated him about it at lunch. Kelso made guesses. Donna teased him, and Fez tried to poke his neck. Hyde told them nothing. He escaped to The Hub after the last bell rang and played pinball to clear Jackie from his head. He'd caught glimpses of her in the school halls, but that was all.

Showing her his soulmate's messages had been a risk and a hope. It was supposed to open the way for him to reveal his feelings. To let her know he wanted her, not the cosmos's star-picked stranger. But whatever had spooked her yesterday, she wasn't interested in telling him.

He gave the flippers a last, futile slap and went to The Hub's parking lot. His Camino was parked beside a battered Ford Maverick, but only his car seemed to have gotten a ticket. A slip of paper was wedged under the windshield wiper.

The cops must've had a slow afternoon. His tail lights weren't busted. He hadn't violated any parking laws. No reason for him to get a ticket, but his skin prickled as he got closer to his car. The paper wasn't from a cop. It was an index card, and— _shit._ He would've preferred a ticket. His soulmate was relentless, but maybe she'd written to call him an asshole.

He pulled the card from the windshield, but the message had more than seven letters scrawled on it— _double shit._ He could've ripped the thing up, but he had to read it. In case she'd threatened to do something stupid to herself.

 _"I know you,"_ the message began. _"I know where you live. I know who your friends are."_

"Okay..." he said and glanced around. As far as he could see, no one else was in the parking lot, but a Volkswagen Beetle was parked a few spots a. Someone could've been hiding in it, spying on him.

 _"If you're not scared yet, you better be,"_ the message continued, and despite the laugh that pushed out of his throat, his leg muscles tensed. _"Because I'm definitely in love with you, and you're in love with me. And you're just going to have to deal with it."_

He shoved the card into his jacket pocket and got into the Camino. She had to be bluffing, and she was definitely nuts. No damn she could know who he was or where he lived, but telling him how he felt? That was a fence no one was allowed to jump over.

The sky grew darker as he drove to the Formans'. Calling the house his home didn't settle easily in his stomach, though it was more than the place where he crashed. But unless something changed, unless his sense of the temporary vanished, the house would stay _the Formans'_ in his skull.

The Formans' garage door was closed, so he parked the Camino in the drive. He stepped onto the porch, but on the off-chance his soulmate wasn't full of it, he peered through the patio door.

Mrs. Forman was in the kitchen alone, cooking dinner. He hoped to slip by her, but the index card in his pocket slowed him down. He entered the kitchen with light steps, locked the patio door, and visually inspected the Formans' knife block. All the knives were accounted for, but he sniffed the air for excessive oven gas.

"Steven?" Mrs. Forman said. A unpeeled potato was in her hand. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Okay, Mr. Cranky Pants. 'Nothing's' wrong."

His shoulders slumped under his backpack. He hadn't meant to give her attitude, but his soulmate had gone into _Play Misty for Me_ territory. "Sorry," he said. "Need me to help you with anything? I can peel the potatoes—"

"No, no. You've had a rough day—" She waved the peeler at him before he could object. "A mother knows. Why don't you go downstairs and relax a little before dinner?"

He scratched his cheek _Relax._ Right. Helping her cook would've been a better distraction, but she'd likely mother the truth out of him. The basement seemed a safer prospect, but with his psycho soulmate at-large, no place was truly safe anymore.

He checked the dining room on his to the basement. The room was clear, and he moved onto the wooden staircase. The first stair didn't splinter under the pressure of his foot, but he'd have to test the other thirteen. He held onto the railing and descended the staircase sides, stomping on each stair before putting his full weight on it.

"Mind making a little _more_ noise?" Forman said from below. He was sitting on the basement's threadbare couch with the TV off. A textbook and notebook were open on the spool table.

"Whatever you want, man." Hyde pushed his boot heel into the third-to-last stair, the creakiest of the bunch. He did it repeatedly until Forman whipped around and glared at him. "What?" Hyde said. "Just doin' what you asked me to."

Forman refocused on his homework, but when Hyde reached the bottom of the stairs, Forman shut his notebook and sighed. "I've got to start dating other people."

"You do that," Hyde said and dashed to his room. He should've checked the basement for booby-traps first, but death would be better than listening to Forman gripe. Three months of it were enough.

He shut his door carefully, but if his room had been tampered with, the signs weren't obvious. The bare bulb didn't explode when he turned it on. His cot wasn't coated in itching powder. Neither were the clothes folded up on the bookcase that served as a second dresser. He shoved his jacket onto the lowest shelf, but paranoia had taken him over.

A stash of joints was rolled-up and ready to go in his sock drawer. Smoking one might calm him down, but he needed to solve his soulmate problem. Getting high would only dull his reflexes and mind.

He pulled the shoebox from under his cot and counted the messages from his soulmate. She'd sent him twenty-two, including the one from today. That meant she had eight index cards left. He needed to provoke her into using the rest of them. Then she couldn't contact him anymore, and this crap would be over.

He laid one of his own index cards on top of the shoebox and wrote, _"You need a psychiatrist."_

The card vanished in a flurry of sparks. If his soulmate was as vain as she sounded in her messages, his latest one would prompt another shit-storm.

He grabbed his backpack from the floor and left his room. Forman was still in the basement, doing homework. Hyde had about a forty-five minutes to do the same, and he dragged his chair to the spool table.

His history homework consisted of essay questions. The first was easy to answer, but the second had him chewing on his pencil. He opened his textbook to the relevant section, the Age of Enlightenment, and an index card skidded out. He reached for it, but it hit the couch, bounced to the floor, and Forman scooped it up.

"Hand it over, Forman."

Forman stood on the couch cushions and raised the card over his head. "You've been keeping things from me … and after I've let you share my room, my pork chops, my parents—"

Hyde got off his chair, but Forman leapt over the back of the couch and darted to the wooden staircase. He climbed half up by the time Hyde got to the first step, and as Hyde climbed after him, Forman read whatever was written on the index card.

"It all makes sense now," Forman said, laughing. "Now I know why you haven't been sharing this part of your life with me." He pointed at the card. "You've been too busy sharing everything else with her!"

He laughed again despite that Hyde was a step below him, despite that Hyde had a fist waiting to collide with his face.

"Man, I was so wrong about you," Forman went on. "The reason you've been acting like none of this soulmate stuff matters is that it matters to you big-time!" He pressed the index card into his chest, over his heart. "I'm sorry, Hyde. I shouldn't have said those things to you at the mall. You're in deep, just like me."

He flung the index card over the railing, and it spun through the air like a ninja star. Hyde couldn't chase after it. That would reveal more than the card already had, but Forman fled into the kitchen. A smart move. Hyde would've beaten the laughter out of him had he stayed.

The index card had landed half between the couch and the stereo. Hyde descended the stairs and picked it up, and a chill quaked through him as he read the message.

Written in that loopy handwriting he'd come to despise was the first verse of the Who's "I Don't Even Know Myself". It was a song profoundly important to him, an importance he'd told only Forman. He purposely never wore the Who's T-shirts. Never talked about the band. Never listened to its songs in public, all to make sure he didn't let slip that one song's significance to him.

He raced to his room and kicked closed the door. His shoebox was still on the cot. He tossed the top onto his pillow, removed another index card, and wrote, _"Why the hell did you write those lyrics?"_

* * *

No answers came by dinner time.

Hyde pushed his diced potatoes and ground beef into a pile on his plate. Forman, Red, and Mrs. Forman were half through their own plates, but Hyde couldn't suppress his fear enough to eat. The kitchen had three-and-a half escapes routes: the patio, the dining room, the living room, and the basement. But the dining room ultimately led to the living room, and the four entrances to the kitchen meant his nutbag soulmate had four ways to get to him.

"Aw, sweetie," Mrs. Forman said, "your soulmate's messages can't be worth starving yourself over."

Hyde stared at Forman, and the traitorous dillhole grinned. He must have blabbed about the index card. Mrs. Forman was intuitive, but she wasn't psychic.

"Kitty, we agreed not to use the _s-_ word at the table." Red gestured to his plate. "I'm trying to eat."

"But that agreement was about Eric."

Forman quit grinning. "What?"

"Well, honey, you have been talking an awful lot about Donna ever since she broke up with you."

"I broke up with … eh, ever mind." Forman continued eating, but his cheeks flushed.

"No soulmate-talk is fine with me," Hyde said and shoveled a forkful of ground beef into his mouth. Anything to stop Mrs. Forman from worrying or asking questions.

He managed to finish most of his meal and afterward offered to wash the dishes. He gathered plates, and Mrs. Forman said, "Did you finish your homework?"

Not even close. "Yup."

"Oh, you are lying. I'll wash up here. You go do your homework."

"I finished my homework," Forman said.

"Great," Red said. "You can help your mother with the dishes."

"Damn—" Forman's voice cracked at Red's raised eyebrows, "I'm excited to help Mother."

Hyde inscribed that moment on his brain. It had great burn-potential. He owed Forman a few, but he returned to the basement and his homework.

Fifteen minutes later, he stuffed his history textbook and notebook into his backpack. He'd finished the essay questions—badly. His answers were lame. His concentration was shot. He'd be lucky to get a C on whatever he handed in tomorrow at school.

Geometry was next, but he brought his backpack into his room. Forman was sure to come downstairs and bother him, and he couldn't afford to give nothing to Mr. Jenkins.

Half through calculating the heights of a triangles, his pencil tip broke. He rummaged in his backpack for the pencil sharpener, found it, and sharpened his pencil over his trashcan. Poking out of the used tissues and discarded pop cans, however, was an index card.

He yanked it out. _"People tend to underestimate me,"_ the message said. _"Their mistake."_

His hand shook. He considered dropping the card back into the trash, but he put it into his shoebox.

Geometry would have to wait. He grabbed the paper bag from his sock drawer, sat in the Formans' old armchair, and propped his legs on the matching ottoman. Most of his life had been spent in discomfort, with harsh hands and harsher words. His soulmate's messages had brought a new kind of discomfort, promising an endless misery he always suspected was his fate.

The thought pounded in his head. It was one he wanted to forget. His fingers wrapped around a joint in the paper bag, but something stung the side of his palm.

He withdrew his fist from the bag. His skin had been vandalized by a paper cut. "Crap."

Inside the bag, two joints acted like bookends for an index card. He plucked it out and read the message on it: _"When you hear my words, you'll know who I am … and maybe you'll start to understand yourself, too."_

He tossed the card across the room and sparked up a joint. His soulmate knew fuck-all about him, but that belief grew weaker as he smoked. Maybe she was a super spy, trained from birth. Or her dad was a military scientist, one who'd created clothes that rendered their wearer invisible. She could be in his room right now, wearing those clothes. Or she was writing to him from the future, after he'd spilled his secrets to her under torture.

Whatever possibility turned out to be true, she'd probably kill him with her final card. Either with its message or with the card itself, slicing it across his jugular.


	4. That Kiss

**Disclaimer:** _That '70s Show_ copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC.

CHAPTER FOUR  
 **THAT KISS**

Jackie gazed up at the stars twinkling over the Pinciottis' backyard. The cold air chilled her throat. The yellow sofa she sat on clashed with her red jacket, but this Wednesday was a good one. It promised even better Wednesdays to come if she did her part.

Her English notebook was on her lap. An index card peeked out from it like a bookmark, one of the five she had left. But she wouldn't need any more than that. God didn't make mistakes. She fully believed that now, but she had to use the wisdom that experience had given her.

"Hello?" Donna's waved her gloved hand in front of Jackie's face. She was sitting beside Jackie on the sofa. "Are you gonna tell me why you're forcing me to sit out here instead of inside where we can get some hot cocoa? It's freaking freezing."

"The stars, Donna. What I have to tell you requires a more cosmic backdrop than your kitchen's tacky wallpaper."

"So...?"

Jackie tapped her pen against her notebook. " I know who my soulmate is."

"Oh, my God. Who?" Donna smiled like she'd gotten season tickets to the Packers, and Jackie savored the moment. Donna rarely got this excited about Jackie's romantic life.

"My soulmate overthinks things and doesn't think enough," Jackie said, "but I understand him. He's terrified. His ideas about soulmates got corrupted by what his awful family did to him, but—"

"Did he tell you that? I thought he barely shared anything personal."

"Aren't you listening? I know who he is!" Jackie pulled her index card from the notebook and flapped it in the air. "He didn't have to share anything through these. I've seen it. I've heard it"

Donna exhaled, and her breath came out as a white cloud. "Wait, you're saying he's someone here? Like, in our town … our school?"

Jackie shut her eyes. She wanted to confess everything, but that would ruin her plan. "All I can say is he's very close." A giggle tickled her chest, and she couldn't hold it in. She laughed until it grew into a cackle. "I am a mastermind, Donna. The last few cards I wrote him have him quaking in his boots!"

"Are you being lazy by using that cliché are are you being literal?"

"Jealous."

"Frustrated," Donna said. "And cold." She hugged herself and shivered. "Either tell me who your soulmate is, or I'm going in."

Jackie huffed. Donna should've worn a better coat. Jackie wasn't exactly warm herself, but her wool coat kept her teeth from chattering. Adrenaline probably played a small part, too.

Donna stared at her. "Well?"

"I can't tell you yet. I want him to realize who I am without anyone's help. And you know how interfering you are. You'd give him obvious hints—"

"I would not!" Donna pressed her lips together and glanced up at the sky. "Okay, maybe I would."

Jackie pointed her pen at her index card. "I need my messages, his brain, and his heart to get him to figure it out. I have the advantage now."

"Oh, yeah? Could you tell me how? Because I'd love to get the advantage over Eric."

"I'm using my knowledge of him against him … _for_ us."

"Huh. You might just have something there."

Jackie twirled her pen like a baton. "Are you finally ready to admit how much of a genius I am?"

"If you get what you're hoping to get, I will."

"Don't think I won't hold you to that. Watch this."

She used her notebook as a writing surface and wrote one word on her index card: _"Tomorrow."_

The card disappeared in a flash of light, and her cheeks flushed. Thursday was going to change two lives irreversibly. God had done His part, and Jackie was doing hers. Now her soulmate just had to do his.

* * *

Hyde had considered jumping into the Camino this morning, cutting school, and driving somewhere far from Point Place, like Canada. He'd gotten a message from his soulmate last night, simply stating, _"Tomorrow."_

She was either lying about everything, or she'd follow through on her implied threats. She'd show up here at school and force herself on him, kissing him, killing him, or both.

He removed his shades and studied the lobby bulletin board. No notes from Forman, Fez, or Kelso. They were supposed to meet him at lunch period and go to The Hub, but they were late. Just what he didn't need. Safety existed in numbers, and he was alone.

A clamor of voices and squeaky footsteps echoed across the lobby. It traveled from the senior lockers, and area that also served as junction between stairwells. Most students were heading downstairs to the cafeteria, but one voice rose above the racket: "Steven—"

His body reacted first, jumping backward, but his brain identified Jackie. She was standing beside him, wearing a peach-colored ski jacket. She'd curled her hair, and it framed her face without hiding any of its features, like her soft brown eyes and slightly frowning mouth.

"Hey," she said, "are you okay?"

More adrenaline pumped into his system, but he clutched his belt buckle and sniffed. "I'm cool."

"Could've fooled me. You look really tense."

He jutted his chin toward the senior locker area. His friends were more than late now. They were pissing him off. "Just waiting for the morons to show up, but I'm about to bail. Lunch period's only got so many minutes, you know?"

She adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder. "We could go to lunch together."

"You haven't talked to me since you bolted from my room on Sunday."

"Yes, I have."

"No, you haven't."

 _"I have,"_ she said, and he flinched at the intensity in her eyes. He covered his agitation by cracking his neck. Maybe she had tried to talk to him, but he hadn't heard her.

"Anyway..." her gaze softened again, and she pushed a thick curl from her cheek, "I'm sorry for leaving so abruptly. It wasn't a nice thing to do, especially since you shared something so personal. But I read something in the cards your soulmate wrote, and I just had to go."

He could respect that. His soulmate's messages had a similar effect on him. "Buy you a cheeseburger?" he said and gestured to the lobby's double doors.

"Really?"

"You like cheeseburgers, right?"

"Yes. I'm just surprised you'd know that—and would buy my lunch."

"I pay attention. I also did an extra shift at the Fotohut last week." He patted his jeans pocket. "Got some dough."

She tilted her head. "If this is a bribe..."

"What the hell would I bribe you for?"

"To leave you alone."

He puffed out his cheeks and let out a breath. The only person he wanted to leave him alone was his soulmate. "I'm offerin' to buy you lunch," he said. "Put two and two together."

"I'm not the one who—" She bit into her knuckle and closed her eyes. "You know what? Let's go."

* * *

Hyde glanced over his shoulder at the school. He shifted his focus to the street then to the students walking ahead of him and Jackie. The Hub was only a few blocks away, but his soulmate had plenty of space to strike.

"You really are tense," Jackie said. "What is going on?"

"Why'd you say soulmates are bullshit on Sunday?" His question wasn't meant as a deflection, but he had to ease her into his situation gradually.

"Mine doesn't want anything to do with me. He told me to give up on him." She grasped her purse and pushed it against her hip. "Nothing I've written has convinced him to reconsider, so I've done what he asked. I've given up on him."

His stomach cramped a little. She'd done what he wished his own soulmate would do: give up on him. He glanced over his shoulder again. No one was following, not even Forman, Kelso, or Fez. His soulmate could've gotten to them first, to thin out his defenses. .

"Your soulmate doesn't know you, man," he said and sped up the pace, "so he doesn't know what he's missing out on. I..." He scrubbed a hand over his face and accidentally smudged his shades. _Crap._ Cleaning them would only slow him down, and he hooked them on his shirt collar. "But even when you're in front of someone, interacting with her on a daily basis, you can miss a helluva lot. He's probably screwed up in the head. You're better off."

She didn't respond until The Hub was in view. "How could I possibly be better off?"

"'Cause you don't have a crazy nutjob stalking you."

"Is that why you're so nervous?"

He held open The Hub's door for her. "Yeah."

She entered, and he followed, but his heart pummeled his skull. If his soulmate was actually spying on him, and she realized Jackie was the chick he'd fallen for over her ... "Fuck," he said. "This is a bad idea."

"You don't have to pay for my burger. I can—"

"No, man. My soulmate's a psycho and after me. She sees us together, she could come after you. Don't want you getting hurt 'cause of me."

"Too late for that, Steven." She grabbed his jacket sleeve and dragged him to the food-ordering line. "But it's my own fault because I've been so stubborn."

He tugged on his earlobe. He had no clue what she she getting at.

"Your soulmate doesn't scare me, " she said, "but she's already hurt both of us."

"That's why you split on Sunday," he said. She didn't answer, but that was the only logical explanation. His soulmate's messages must've kicked her bruises.

They reached the cashier and ordered, and as they waited for their food, Hyde scoped out The Hub. The regulars were here—Jimmy Headgear and half the debate team—but part of Jackie's cheer squad sat at a pair of tables.

"I'll pay for the food, but maybe you should sit over there..." He nodded at the cheerleaders.

"I'm not leaving you." She rubbed his arm reassuringly. "Like I said, your soulmate doesn't scare me."

The cashier rang a bell on the order counter. Their food was ready, and Hyde carried it on a tray to a strategically chosen table, one by the jukebox. His vantage point let him watch all three of The Hub's entryways: the front door, the back door, and the bathroom door.

He and Jackie unwrapped their burgers, and Forman, Kelso, and Fez finally arrived. Rhonda was with them, but Hyde focused on Jackie. Talking about his problems wasn't his style. The worse his trouble, the less he liked to speak. But to have any chance with Jackie, he'd have to open up. "If you were me," he said, "what'd you tell my soulmate to get her to back off?"

"Well, as someone who pursued you relentlessly in the past, no matter what you said to me, I'm the right person to ask."

"And?"

She popped a French fry into her mouth, and he tried not to stare. She even chewed cutely. "When did I finally leave you alone?"

The nape of his neck got hot. He drank some pop, but it didn't cool him down. "That kiss," he said.

" _Our_ kiss. It made me realize just how much I'd started to love you … and because of that, I believed you couldn't possibly be my soulmate." She curled her fingers over his hand and squeezed it. Electric warmth shot up his arm. "You were too real," she said, and her statement vibrated through his whole damn skeleton.

He opened his mouth to speak, but someone thumped his shoulder. "Hyde?" Kelso said by his ear. "What are you doing with Jackie?"

"Use your eyes," Fez said. "They are on a date." He stood beside Jackie and put his hands on his hips. "We waited forty-five seconds for you in the lobby! You could not have left us a note on the bulletin board?"

"They can't be on a date..." Forman gestured to Hyde and Jackie's clasped hands, "despite that damning evidence. She's probably just trying to read his palm or something."

They had the table surrounded, blocking Hyde's view of The Hub's entryways, but Jackie's grip on his hand hadn't loosened. She was still with him, and that was all that mattered.

Forman held an index card in front of Hyde's face. "Look at this latest gem! Then get your heinie to our table." He hiked his thumb to The Hub's only booth, where Rhonda was sitting. "Take it. Read it. Help me write a response to it." He snapped his fingers. "Time's-a-wasting, mister!"

Hyde shoved the card back at Forman. "Later. Got my own shit to deal with."

"Jackie, did you hear that?" Kelso said. "Hyde just called you shit."

"Oh, he did not. Go away, Michael." She tossed a French fry at his unbruised eye. "All of you, go away."

Hyde freed his hand and wrapped his burger in The Hub's tinfoil. "Grab your food," he said to her. "We're eating on the go."

He went to the order window amid Forman, Kelso, and Fez's complaints and got two take-out bags. His friends could be relentless when they were in a mood, but he wouldn't let them or the cosmos dictate how he spent his time.

Or who he spent it with.

* * *

The warmth of Steven's palm spread through Jackie's body as he led her to a playground. The slides, seesaws, and monkey bars were full of screaming kids, probably from the nearby elementary school. But she and Steven needed quiet.

They found it on an unoccupied bench by the toddler swings, where moms pushed their bundled-up babies into the air. She could eat without shrieks blasting her eardrums, but her cheeseburger was less than hot. The October air had acted like a refrigerator, but it didn't bother her. Steven was here, had held her hand willingly, and was looking at her without his sunglasses.

"What?" she said.

"You got any of your index cards on ya?"

"Why?"

"'Cause I need you to write your soulmate something."

She drank some Coke and ate a few fries, but her stomach fluttered. Steven was onto her. He had to be, but what was he after? "I don't have many cards left," she said. "I don't want to waste them."

"What's it matter? You said you gave up on your soulmate."

Her shoulders stiffened. "Are you angry at me?"

"For what?" he said, and she pushed her remaining burger aside on the bench. The pigeons could have it. He was trying to goad her into a confession, that she was his soulmate and had written him those creepy messages. But she wouldn't do it. As long as he acted clueless, she'd play along.

"Kissing you on Sunday night," she said.

He sipped at his Coke, as always with the straw at the corner of his mouth. The habit was strange, but it also brought out the boyishness in his face. He wasn't just handsome. He was cute, too, and her stomach flutters intensified. He didn't have the right to be both cute and handsome, not when she couldn't fully enjoy it.

"You pissed at me for not kissing you back?" he said.

"Disappointed."

"Huh." He glanced away, toward the toddler swings. He continued to eat his lunch, but his actions seemed automatic, like his thoughts had either stopped or were too fast for his body to keep up. "Don't want you to regret anything..." he said eventually, "like you did with Kelso."

She slid her hand over his knee. He was finally making sense. "The only thing I'll regret is wasting time." She pulled a pen and one of her remaining index cards from her purse. "What should I write?"

He looked at her again and cupped the side of her face. "Steven, what are you—" she said, but he scooted closer to her on the bench, and his lips touched hers lightly. She opened her mouth wider, half out of shock, half because she ached for more of him, but he didn't make her wait. He deepened the kiss, shining a summer sun onto her skin.

Her pen and index card dropped to the ground. A thrill careened through her body, and she hooked her arm around his shoulders for support. Their kiss was slow and deliberate, allowing her to feel his love and anguish at the core of her. He was still the little boy who didn't know if he were real, who'd grown into the teenager who believed he had no future worth living.

She withdrew from him a bit and pecked the corner of his lips. She'd carried that hurt little boy with her for years and loved the man he was becoming. Surely he understood that by now.

He continued to cup the side of her face, and his thumb caressed her cheek. "Write down how that kiss felt," he said quietly. "The truth. That'll tell your soulmate everything he needs to know."

His touch left her skin. Her cheek grew cold without him, and she suppressed the urge to grab his hand. He picked up her index card and pen from the ground and passed them to her.

"Where are you going?" she said when he got off the bench. Her voice was trembling, mirroring the quiver in her body.

"Givin' you privacy."

He left the playground, disappearing beyond the monkey bars and seesaws, and she checked her watch. She had seven minutes to get back to school, but she began to write on the index card.


	5. For Keeps

**Disclaimer:** _That '70s Show_ copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC.

 **Author's Note:** If you'd like to take part in 2018's edition of the _Zenmasters Anthology_ (as an author, artist, or both), please follow the _Zenmasters Anthology_ on tumblr. Google "Zenmasters Anthology," and you'll find it. :D

CHAPTER FIVE  
 **FOR KEEPS**

Hyde slung a towel around his bare, sweaty shoulders. Gym class had taken a lot out of him and put most of it into his shirt. Wearing jeans during class wasn't the brightest move, even in October. But showing off his legs wouldn't happen, no matter how hot he got. He'd always been private about his body, with rare exception. His history was written on it, and that book wasn't for public consumption.

Metallic clanks and bravado filled the boys' locker room. Destroy and Give Back were the most obnoxious offenders, whipping their towels at anyone unlucky enough to cross their path. Avoiding them was a necessity. If a wet towel stung Hyde's back, he'd throw a fist, and he'd earned enough bruises in gym.

Coach Ferguson's soccer drills were tough, and Jackie had screwed his concentration. Her kiss, her words—and the words he was waiting for—tripped up his feet and sent kicks straight to his shins. Only when Andrew Schmidt repeatedly smashed his foot into Hyde's leg did he snap out of it.

A fresh shirt was crammed in his locker. He yanked it out, and an index card flew out with it. He turned around as the card shot past him. It landed a few feet away, but a meaty hand scooped it up.

Hyde's heart slammed into his ribs. Destroy had the index card, and his dimwitted cohort, Give Back, stood beside him.

"Aw," Destroy said, "did little Heidi get a message from his soulmate?"

Give Back laughed. "Heidi."

Hyde relaxed his stance. Using his firsts would only get his ass kicked. Destroy and Give Back had four inches of height and thirty pounds of muscle on him. They were on the football team, meaning they could skip gym class, but they were either too dumb or too arrogant to care.

Destroy waved the index card in Hyde's face. "You want this, Heidi?"

"Can't say that I do." Hyde shut his locker and took his time putting on his fresh shirt. He wrapped the sweaty one around his wrist, but a hard jab to his shoulder added to the pressure in his chest. He exhaled, looked at Destroy, and forced all rage from his voice. "What's up?"

"That's not how this works. You tell me to give you the card back. I rip it in half, and then my buddy returns it."

"You can keep it." He didn't need an index card to tell him what was real. Jackie's feelings were as tangible as the wall Destroy and Give Back had created between him and the rest of the locker room. "Got places to be, so..."

Destroy blinked, as if he'd been told to do a pirouette on the football field, but he moved aside and gestured for Give Back to do the same. Hyde sauntered toward the exit, going slowly where others would rush. Demonstrating anything other than indifference could provoke those two dillholes. They were trained to smell fear and anger and use it to their advantage.

Hyde entered the hallway, but heavy, thudding footfalls followed him. Thick fingers grasped his wrist and shoved the index card into his palm.

"You've freaked out my pal!" Give Back said beside him. "Neil's gonna be a mess on the field tomorrow. I hope you're happy."

His plodding steps faded, and Hyde examined the card. It was intact and covered in miraculously unsmeared writing, but he couldn't read Jackie's message yet. Not here.

After school, he drove the Camino to a side street. It was lined with maple trees, whose golden leaves Jackie would dig, but their seeds were more interesting. They resembled helicopter rotors, and a few spun to the concrete whenever the wind blew. No new trees would grow from them, though. Not unless they rode the wind to Mt. Humphrey Park, where they had dirt, not stone, to take root.

His stomach hollowed out. Becoming like stone was one of his defenses, but he had to stay flesh, no matter what Jackie had written him. Otherwise, their relationship would be D.O.A.

He removed the card from his backpack, and his eyes scanned the whole message but took in nothing. Thoughts and blood had started a race through his body, each stoking the other to go faster. Both had to slow down, and he stared at the maples. A few deep breaths in and out, a few rhythmic taps on the Camino's steering wheel, and he returned his gaze to the card.

 _"I didn't expect you to kiss me today,"_ Jackie's message began. _"It scared me a little. I know you didn't mean to, but I guess I deserved that for freaking you out the last few days."_

A chill crept over his skin. She'd put the facts together and used them to get payback for his messages to her. The game she'd played was messed up, but everyone was working within a messed-up system.

 _"You are an amazing kisser_ , _"_ her message continued, and he smiled wide enough that it embarrassed him. Didn't matter that he was alone. He covered his mouth with his hand _"It was like you set my blood on fire, caused an earthquake in my bones, and struck my heart with lightning. And I understand now why we had such trouble with our messages."_

His pulse throbbed in his neck and his dick, but jerking off in his car was a low he refused to reach. Especially not when he was so naturally high. Jackie's words had torched the last year of misery, creating a sense of hope wholly unfamiliar to him.

He flipped the card over and wiped his sweaty palm on his jeans. _"We're both right in our arguments,"_ her message said. _"God put us together, but it's up to us what we make of that."_

"Holy hell," he said aloud. She got what he'd been telling her. She freakin' understood.

 _"We can go our separate ways any time we choose,"_ her message went on, _"but even without realizing our cosmic connection, we became something significant and, I think, beautiful to each other. If you're the man I believe you are, then you'll know what to do next."_

He ran his finger over the last few words and reread them. His place in this world felt more solid and substantial with her than it did without her. But she couldn't be—and wasn't—responsible for his happiness. He had shitload of cobwebs to clear out of his skull. It would probably take him a long time, but her presence in his life would make the process easier.

And he'd do his damn best to give her just as much back.

* * *

Jackie lay in bed, reading _Nancy Drew: Nancy's Mysterious Letter._ She was trying to calm down enough to sleep, but anxiety crawled between her ribs. Cheer practice and homework had kept her from seeing Steven after their kiss. He hadn't written her anything, and he wasn't the phone call type. But if her last message didn't get through his head, nothing would.

She glanced at the alarm clock on her nightstand. Steven tended to write his messages late, but 11:16 pm wasn't late enough for him, apparently.

No index cards appeared as she read another chapter. Her eyes fluttered closed halfway through the next one. They snapped open, and the clock showed 1:32 am. Herbook had dropped to the floor, but no index card peeked from under it. Steven was staying silent, and she needed to sleep.

She shut off her lamp and curled up on her side. Her arms clutched her pillow, and a sharp edge dug into her hand.

Her heart became a frenzied clock, ticking madly in her ears. An index card was wedged underneath her pillow—Steven's message. Their future. Her fingertips scraped the corner of the card. She imagined sitting up and reading his words, but her body was spent from cheer practice and processing her kiss with Steven. A shift between them had occurred last year, and they were shifting again.

Her eyes refused to open. Dreams supplanted thoughts, and she woke to her alarm clock. Sunlight poured in through her window. Morning had come, and she tossed off her bed covers and snatched the index card from her pillow. Steven's message had better be good, or he was going to experience her fury in person. No more games.

She held the card with her right hand but covered most of it with her left. She needed to go over his words carefully, not rush through them.

 _"I'm real,"_ the first sentence said, and her breath caught in her throat. He'd given a new answer to her first-ever soulmate message to him, the one she'd written at nine-years-old. She fought the urge to hug the card to her chest. He'd acknowledged his significance to her, their cosmic connection, and his own existence.

 _"So is how I feel around you … and about you,"_ his message continued. " _Gonna save the other important shit I gotta say for the next time we see each other."_

She squealed and kicked her heels against her bed frame. Steven Hyde was in love with her. He'd chosen her himself, despite that God had also chosen them for each other. He'd stopped letting his beliefs get in the way of love … because she'd done the same.

* * *

Hyde spent the first two periods of school thinking about Jackie. He hadn't seen her before the first bell or between classes. Had no clue how his last message to her went over. Obsessing about anyone was no joy, but at least a psycho wasn't stalking him

Not that Jackie had ever threatened him in her messages. She'd just been adamant, overbearing, and somewhat terrifying.

During third-period history, Hyde tried to focus on taking notes. Mr. Wilcox lectured the class about John Locke's _Two Treatises of Government._ Locke's philosophies were cool, but Hyde's pencil remained still on his notebook until the graphite tip broke.

He sharpened it, but it broke again soon after. He began to resharpen it, and his mind strayed to the push and pull of Jackie's lips. Her warm breath on his skin. Her apple-scented hair filling his senses. The memory dissipated, but pencil shavings covered his notebook. He'd ground his pencil to the size of a joint roach.

 _Crap—_ Jackie had full custody of his concentration. The school bell needed to ring already.

It didn't, not for another twenty minutes. He filed into the hallway with other students, but above the noise of sneaker-squeaks, his name reached his ears. He moved toward it, weaving among backpacks and elbows, but a hand grabbed his sleeve and tugged him to stretch of wall.

Jackie's face was smiling up at him. He couldn't help but smile back.

"Hey, Steven." She pressed herself close to his body as students passed them by. "I have no time, but I just had to see you."

His stomach muscles tensed. He had to rush off to biology himself, but he closed his arms around her. His body craved her presence, and when she hugged his waist, he whispered, "So fuckin' glad it's you."

"Oh, my God." She sounded like she was in pain, and he loosened his embrace. He must've squeezed her too hard, but he hadn't meant to hurt her. "No," she said, "don't let go." Her left hand twisted in his shirt. Her right hand burrowed into his hair, and he hugged her more tightly. "Don't ever stop saying that kind of stuff to me, either. I need to hear it."

His neck flushed. He hadn't expected to blurt such sensitive info, but he'd anticipated a life without her—without love—so damn long that he couldn't pretend. She was getting him raw and unprotected.

"More later," he said and kissed the skin by her ear. They'd both waited a long time for what they needed. They'd have to wait just a little longer.

* * *

Jackie spent early evening at Fort Anderson with her cheer squad. She did her best to encourage Point Place High to victory, but the Snapping Turtles scored a game-winning touchdown in the second half. Neil "Destroy" Rooney, the Vikings' defensive tackle, had done a lousy job tonight. He'd let the running back dash across the field with no opposition. Coach Ferguson would spend the bus ride home reprimanding him. That was a guarantee.

Valerie probably had the same in store for the cheer squad. As cheer captain, she tended to take the Vikings' losses personally, but Jackie needed to see Steven.

Instead of following her teammates to the bus, she searched the bleachers for Fez. He and Rhonda came to every game, and his green-and-white Vikings banner gave him away. It stood out among the hundreds of red-and-black Snapping Turtles banners. Rhonda must have acted as his bodyguard, keeping him safe from irate Snapping Turtles supporters, and Jackie sprinted up to them as the stadium began to empty.

"Jackie," Fez said when she reached them, "are you here to cheer me up? This is a sad day for Point Place High."

Rhonda gestured to the field. "Yeah! What happened to the Vikings' hustle?"

Jackie wiped her brow of sweat. She hated talking about football, but it was her ticket to Steven. "We can discuss it on the drive to the Formans'—if that's where you're going."

"It sure is," Rhonda said. "Fez says Mrs. Forman makes peach cobbler on Fridays."

Fez leaned his head on Rhonda's arm. "I need some good food after that disastrous display. The Vikings had the game in their giant hands, and they dropped it!"

"Aw, Cocoa Puff." Rhonda slid her thick arms around Fez's back, enclosing him in a bear hug, and lifted him off the ground. "We'll get 'em next time."

"Ai—your consolation is as comforting as it is rib-crushing."

She put him down. "Sorry. I keep forgetting how delicate you are."

Jackie bit the inside of her cheek. Rhonda was built like the water tower: tall, wide, and potentially deadly. Jackie didn't dare say what she thought, though, that Rhonda should take responsibility for her gargantuan biceps. Instead she rushed off to the cheer squad bus to get her coat and backpack.

"Where do you think you're going?" Valerie said when Jackie tried to leave the bus.

"I have a meeting with my soulmate," Jackie said. "You wouldn't get in the way of true love, would you?"

Valerie clutched Jackie's hand with both of hers. "Of course not. Who is he? Do we know him?"

"If you let me off this bus, maybe you'll find out."

"All right..." Valerie flipped her blond hair, a subtle assertion of her seniority. "But I expect you at cheer practice on time this Monday. We have to do better by our football team."

Jackie fluffed her own hair. "Am I ever late?"

"No."

"Then we don't have any problem."

Valerie stepped aside and smiled the fake, toothy smile all cheerleaders had to learn. "Love you, Jackie!"

"Love you, too!" Jackie blew Valerie a kiss from the front of the bus, but inside her mind she flipped Valerie off. The exchange was typical between them, and maybe it would get Jackie into trouble one day. But Valerie's whims wouldn't affect Jackie's future, just her status on the cheer squad.

She found Rhonda and Fez in the parking lot, and after a few moments they were on the road. The ride was bumpy. Rhonda's Ford Maverick needed its shock absorbers checked or replaced, but at least Jackie didn't have to talk about the football game. Rhonda and Fez had plenty to say themselves.

A half-hour later, the they arrived at the Formans'. Rhonda wanted to go in through the kitchen, but Fez convinced her to visit the basement first. "Mrs. Forman does not like to be ambushed," he said and rubbed his forehead. "I learned that the hard way. A scream, a flying wooden spoon, and cake batter all over my face. She didn't mean to, but I'd startled her."

"Come on," Jackie said and led the three of them to the basement. She pushed open the back door, expecting relative quiet—the TV tuned to _The New Adventures of Wonder Woman,_ light banter between Steven and Eric—but the TV was off, and the volume of Eric's voice made her wince:

"I've read this thing over a dozen times!"

He was pacing the floor and waving an index card around. Steven sat in his chair, head tilted to the side and arms crossed over his chest.

"What—" Jackie said, but Fez grasped her arm, stopping her from going deeper into the basement.

"Hyde taught me that this kind of thing is like TV," he whispered. "Just watch."

Rhonda laugh-snorted behind Jackie, but Eric didn't seem to hear it. He kept his back to them and stepped in front of Steven.

"And I quote," he said and read from the index card, "'You wouldn't be so insecure if your dad respected the kind of man you are. But I fell in love with you because you're not like all those macho boneheads out there. You're sensitive and used to be, mostly, respectful of me as a woman and person. You listened, and you tried to understand my point of view.'"

Jackie put down her backpack. Her spot by the door was cramped with Fez and Rhonda crowding her. The tight space caused her to press her arms to her sides. If she had to watch this show, she'd do it without her backpack hunching her shoulders, too.

Eric flipped the card over and continued to read. "'But that stopped the moment I built parts of my life that don't involve you, like my job at the radio station. Yes, I shouldn't have said on air I don't have a boyfriend. That was wrong. That was me bowing to the demands of male chauvinism, and I'm ashamed of that. But I won't let you, or anyone, control me for any reason. My body, my life, my choices.'"

He flicked the card. "What am I supposed to do with that, huh?" He flicked the card again. "Tell me: what the hell am I supposed to do with that?"

Steven shrugged with his arms still crossed over his chest. "She's not wrong."

"Oh, yeah? Well, you know what I think?" Eric lowered his voice. "I think Donna wouldn't have gotten those ideas in her head if a certain person, who's standing several feet behind me, hadn't put them in there."

Fez pushed himself in front of Jackie and placed both hands over his heart. "I said no such things!"

"But he believes in them," Rhonda said, joining him.

He glanced up at her. "Yes. I do."

She bent her face toward him. They were about to kiss, and Jackie scooted around them."You mean me," she said to Eric.

"That's right, missy." Eric jabbed the index card at her, and she dodged, avoiding a paper cut to her nose. "You've always hated that Donna and I are soulmates. You're jealous that she has one who lives right next door and yours is God-knows-where." He jabbed a finger at her this time. "But guess what, lady. Just because you're going to be alone the rest of your life doesn't mean you get to decide that I am."

"Hold on, Forman." Steven stood up and stepped behind him. "This is part of the reason why you and Donna are quits. Instead of taking responsibility for your crap, you plop it onto everyone else."

"That's right!" Jackie stuffed her fists into her coat pockets, resisting the urge to smash them into Eric's jaw. "Before you and Donna ever started dating, I was the one who helped her figure out how to go from being your friend to your girlfriend. Then, once you two were in a relationship, who do you think got Donna to forgive you half the time?"

Eric's tongue twitched in his mouth, but he didn't speak.

"I may not like you personally," she said. "I mean, let's face it: you're bony, nerdy, and obnoxious, but I was your cheerleader. You and Donna could be so good for each other—but only if you treat her like an equal partner, not like someone put on Earth to serve you."

"Sing it, sister!" Fez shouted. He was holding Rhonda's hand, and they sat on the couch together. "I wonder what's going to happen next—"

The back door banged against the wall, and Michael burst into the basement like a bottle rocket. "Guys, —" he said but tripped over Jackie's backpack and sprawled onto the floor. He jumped to his feet a second later, seemingly unhurt, and heaved in a breath. "I just saw the Loch Ness Monster!"

Fez drummed his fingers on his knees. "Well, I did not expect that turn of events _._ "

"No, I mean it! I was down at the reservoir, skipping rocks. Okay, not so much rocks as Casey's football trophies from high school. And this giant, green tail splashed out of the water and went _whoosh!_ back down again."

"Kelso," Eric said, "the Loch Ness Monster is called the Loch Ness Monster because it supposedly lives in _Loch Ness._ In Scotland."

"Then this is its cousin, the Point Place Monster." Michael gestured at him."Come on! Grab your dad's fishing net, and let's capture this thing."

"Do you think it's your soulmate?" Fez said.

"No, I think we're gonna make a ton of money! Eric, the net?"

"I'm not going to the reservoir with you," Eric said. "It's probably a dead log you agitated."

"I'm telling you, I saw a tail!"

"Yeah, Laurie's," Steven said, "when you slept with her."

Eric's eyebrows rose. "You think it grew back?"

"Anything's possible man," Steven said and walked past him to Jackie. His right arm slipped around her waist. His left hand slid over her cheek, and her muscles stiffened. He'd created an intimate space between them in public, and their closeness scrambled her thoughts. "What's up?" he said quietly.

She stared at him. "What are you doing?"

"Ha, ha. I get it," Eric said. "'Anything's possible.' Don't make-out with Jackie just to prove a point. My sister growing back her tail is as likely as Kelso seeing the Loch Ness Monster in the reservoir."

"Are you sure about that?" Rhonda said. "Fez has told me some stories about that sister of yours."

"Ooh, maybe _Laurie_ is the Point Place Monster." Fez mimed a serpent with his hand. "We haven't seen her in almost a year. Maybe she returned to her original form."

Steven stopped cradling Jackie's cheek but didn't remove his arm from her waist. "Nice burn, but here's the deal—"

Donna raced into the basement through the back door. "Eric, we have to talk—" she said but froze at the couch. "Okay..." her index fingers traced an imaginary circle around Jackie and Steven, "what is going on here?

"Hyde's trying to prove a point," Eric said, and Jackie's thoughts finally unscrambled. Steven was announcing their relationship through a demonstration, only Eric and the rest of them were too dense to get it.

"Steven," she said and tugged on one of his belt loops, "lies or truth?"

"Wasted enough damn time."

She let out a shuddering breath. He drew her closer, easing the tension in her body. "Everyone," she said, "Steven and I are soulmates—"

"But it's our choice to be together," he said, "so all of you can shut it."

Donna flinched. "What?

Michael's mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"Sexy," Fez said. "Strange, but sexy."

Rhonda patted her stomach. "I could go for that peach cobbler now."

"No, no, no, no, no," Eric sputtered. "This can't be happening!" He marched up to Jackie. "First Donna, now Hyde? What did you do to him, you witch?"

Jackie swung back her foot, intending to kick his shin, but Steven wedged himself between them. "Forman, knock it the hell off."

"Yeah!" Donna dragged Eric by the shirt collar to Steven's chair. "Jackie didn't do anything to me or to Hyde, so leave them alone." She turned to Jackie. "No wonder you wouldn't tell me who your soulmate is..." She bit her upper lip and shifted her eyes to the right. "Huh. Come to think about it, the handwriting on the card you showed me did look familiar."

"What's she talkin' about?" Steven said.

"I made her read one of your messages," Jackie said.

"Not that part. The first part."

"Okay, fine. I also told her how I was trying to freak out my soulmate: you." She reached toward his face and brushed her knuckle along his sideburn. "But I needed you to realize who I am on your own."

His eyes closed at her touch. "Wanna get some privacy?"

"Please."

"No!" Michael snatched Jackie's backpack from the floor. "He tricked you, Jackie! _I'm_ your soulmate, and I'll prove it!"

Steven dived at him. Michael dropped the backpack, but the crook of Steven's arm made contact with Michael's neck. They both went down. Michael's back thumped onto the concrete floor, and Steven landed on top of him.

"You're gonna prove what, man?" Steven said. He pushed himself into a crouch and held onto Michael's shirt. "That you used Jackie's beliefs to get what you want?" Michael tried to sit up, but Steven shoved him back to the floor. "That you take her for a moron who doesn't learn from her mistakes? 'Cause she has. She's with me now. Her choice, and you've got shit to say about it."

Jackie pressed her lips together. She could yell at Michael herself, but Steven's words—his respect for her—began to heal the scar Michael had sliced into her heart.

Steven stood and grabbed her backpack. "Accept that she's done with you," he said to Michael, "and we're good. You don't, and we got trouble."

He offered Jackie his hand. She grasped it, and warmth and joy soaked into her skin. She had chosen him, and so far she didn't regret it.

* * *

Hyde put his shades on his dresser as Jackie sat on his cot. He moved to sit beside her, but she waved to the Formans' ottoman. Fooling around would've been his pick. The ottoman was two arms' lengths away from her, but if she needed some space, she'd get it.

He dropped onto the ottoman, and she gazed off to the side, when maybe to her coat. It was draped on the tattered armchair, and she propped her foot onto her backpack. "Eric really doesn't like me."

"So what? I like you."

Her fingers played with the edge of her cheerleader skirt. "Even after I pestered you with messages for almost a decade?"

"I didn't give you much to work with," he said. "Plus, I told you I was in love with someone else … who happened to be you." He scratched the nape of his neck and glanced away. She was anxious about their situation, about them. He looked at her again, but this time she met his gaze. "Things got a bit fucked between us."

She gripped the edge of her skirt, revealing a few inches of thigh. But she was clearly upset, not trying to seduce him. "If I'd just … if I'd gone with my feelings instead of my fears, we could've been together last year. I'm sorry."

"Hey, you're the one who figured out what was what. Not me."

"Only because you let me read the messages from your soulmate who, yeah, happened to be me."

He rubbed the top of his knees. She had to be absolutely sure she wanted to be with him, or they weren't going to work. He wouldn't hold her hostage in a relationship, using the concept of soulmates as a weapon.

"You know shit's not gonna be easy for us, right?" he said. "We've antagonized each other pretty much everywhere we could—the basement, school, those index cards..." he stabbed two fingers at his heart, "here."

She got off his cot and strode across the room. She perched beside him on the ottoman, and her palm swept over his chest. "I didn't mean to antagonize you there."

"Man, this last year, I've..." Laughter broke through his words. He'd seen girls as pretty as Jackie and as hot. Touched them, but none had ever touched him the way she did.

And tonight she was a damn sight. Her hair didn't have its usual bounce. It lay flatly on her head, and her scent was a mix of sweat and floral deodorant, but that came with hard work. She must have cheered her ass off at the football game against Fort Anderson.

He took hold of her hand, the one on his chest. She'd never been more freakin' beautiful, and she wanted to be his girl. "Gotta be honest," he said between laughs, "didn't think this would happen."

"You don't think a lot of things will happen. At least, not for you."

"Not arguing."

"Well, I am. You believe in free will, not fate." She rested her free hand on top of his leg. "So why do you doubt you'll have a good future?"

The physical contact between them lit him up. He ached for more of it, but her question cast a long, cold shadow. "Just the way it goes in my family."

She squeezed his leg gently, as if trying to sooth him, but his own need for space had taken over. He stood up and retreated to his dresser.

" _The Formans_ are your family," she said. "Didn't Mr. Forman say you could stay here basically forever?"

His breath stalled in his lungs. That wasn't the first piece of classified info she'd thrown at him. "Where'd you get that from?"

"Okay, Steven, look..." She crossed her legs on the ottoman and laced her fingers over her knee. "I'm very good at getting people to tell me stuff, but anything anyone's ever told me about you I've kept to myself. I promise."

Nothing cosmic about her answer, but his skin itched under his thermal shirt. "Who spilled the beans about that one?" he said and rolled up his sleeves. His nails dug into his skin, scratching it pink. "Mrs. Forman?"

"Yes. I asked why you were so cranky about your eighteenth birthday, and she told me the whole story—about how you assumed you had to move out." She nodded at what had to be her own thoughts. "She cried and called you her _second son._ So when you go to college, you'll probably have to pry her off you."

He quit scratching his skin as the invisible, gaping hole in his guts began to close. It had formed in childhood, gouged into existence by parents who had no desire to be his parents. But the Formans considered him their kid. Not just their son's downtrodden friend but one of their own. "Never planned on going to college, so that won't be a problem."

Jackie pushed herself off the ottoman and bridged the distance between them. "You're going to college, Steven."

"How?" He opened the top drawer of his dresser and yanked out a rumpled paper bag. It contained his stash. "Don't think bribing a dean with some pot'll get me a four-year scholarship." He returned the bag to the drawer. "See why this soulmate crap is crap, man?" He grasped both her hands. "Being with me is gonna cost you a lot."

"Being without you will cost me more." Her thumbs skimmed over his knuckles. "You've watched out for me a long time … and never abandoned me, no matter what I did."

She pulled his hands to her hips. He rested them there, and she said, "Whenever we're together, I feel happy. Steven." She looped her arms around his neck, "I don't want anyone else. Even if we weren't soulmates, I'd still want you."

His chest grew heavy and light at the same time. Jackie was everything his insides screamed for, and he couldn't hold back anymore. He went in for a kiss, but her lips welcomed him for only a few seconds.

"You don't have to go through life alone," she said and hugged him close.

"Neither do you, all right?"

"I know. You helped me pick up the cheese Michael spilled last weekend."

He laughed into her hair. "Should've taken some Limburger and hid it in his van."

"We can still do that."

He pulled back, just enough to see her face. She was grinning, and so was he. No one made him smile like this girl, but he had to know one last thing. "The Who. What tipped you off to that song?"

"Really? We could be making out right now, and you decide to ask me more questions?"

"You hiding something?"

Her eyes flicked to the side. "I'd be betraying a confidence if I told you."

"Forman?" he said. "You blackmail him with insider info from Donna to get insider info on me?

She rocked on her heels and yanked on the hem of his shirt. "You can't retaliate when I tell you."

"I won't."

"You better not because it was done to help you."

He arched an eyebrow. Now he had to know who'd blabbed.

"Donna tried to get me to leave you alone," she said. "You know, last year after I got … overly attached. She suggested I listen to 'I Don't Even Know Myself' to get an idea of how you operate. I did, and it just confused me."

She knotted her hands at his tailbone. Her anxiety seemed to be growing again. She kept shifting where she held onto him, and he brushed his fingers through her hair as reassurance. Their past was their past. He was more interested in their present.

"Then last Sunday I read my messages to you," she continued, "remembered the messages you wrote me, and it all came together."

"And you bolted out of here."

"Yeah." She laid her head on his chest, and he tightened his arms around her. "I hope you're not angry at me for that. Or for being a creep afterward with the index cards. I just hoped to get through to you."

"Not pissed." Not at her. He hadn't been for a long time. "But maybe you were ticked off at me."

"Maybe," she said, and he was glad she could admit it. "But I understand why you wrote what you wrote. If Michael had actually been my soulmate, and I'd stayed with him because of that, my life would've been a nightmare."

He tucked her head under his chin and closed his eyes. She really did get him, better than he'd expected anyone to. Their relationship had been a hellish game of _Twister,_ but they'd managed to disentangle themselves.

"I like this," she whispered. Her ear was pressed to his heart. She must've heard how fast it was beating. Being so exposed was embarrassing, but he liked being this close to her, too. He intended to show her how much, to kiss her until they both forgot they'd ever been apart, but Donna's shout burst through his door:

"You need therapy!"

Formans' voice followed: "Oh, yeah? Well, you need … I don't know what you need, but it's something!"

"It sure as hell isn't you right now!" Donna said, and the basement door slammed hard enough to rattle Hyde's.

Jackie peered up at him. "They are in so much trouble."

"Yup."

"We can't become like them."

"We won't. Unlike Forman, I have no problem cleaning the house, cooking, and doing laundry while you're out there building a successful career."

She caressed his cheek. "Oh, Steven, that's beautiful. You are so secure about your manhood."

A ticklish sensation spread into his stomach, and he grabbed her hips. "How's about I show you how secure I am?"

She laughed, but before he could make a move, she cupped the back of his head and drew him in for a kiss. Her mouth was warm, just the right amount of wet, and tasted a bit like cherries. It had to be from a cherry Jolly Rancher or cherry-flavored lip gloss. Either way, she really did pay attention to him. Cherry was his favorite flavor.

They made out against his dresser, and when they paused for air, his lips went behind her earlobe. A thrill shot through him at her sharp intake of breath. He'd found a sensitive spot. He sucked and kissed her skin as her fingers clutched his hair, and after he stopped, she whispered, "Wow."

"That's just for starters."

"Talk later."

She shoved him onto his cot with a surprising amount of strength. He landed flat on his back, and she crawled on top of him. Her lips returned to his mouth, and they made out again as if they'd never quit.

He tunneled his hands in her hair. The weight of her body on him drove his blood south, but their kisses remained tender, not rough. He wouldn't wreck this—what he had with her or his life. The cosmos had given him a crappy set of folks, but it had also given him the Formans. It had given him a soulmate he thought he couldn't stand, and it turned out to be the girl he didn't want to live without.

Her lips glided over his jawline until they reached his earlobe. Her teeth nipped it, and he suppressed a groan. She'd found one of his sensitive spots.

"You don't like that?" she said.

"It's cool."

"Steven, 'It's cool,' can mean anything with you."

She wasn't wrong. For once, his teachings about ambiguity were working against him.

"It's actually cool," he said and shut his eyes. "Fuck, it feels great, okay?"

"That's better." She nipped his earlobe again. The light tugs on his flesh made him harder, but his insides softened.

"You feel great," he said and winced. He hadn't meant to say that out loud, but the words existed now as sound waves. No reason not to go all the way, and he opened his eyes. "Jackie, man—I love you."

Her mouth left his earlobe. Her hands pushed into the cot on either side of him, raising her up and taking her weight off him. "Steven..." the tips of her hair brushed against his cheeks, "that's cool."

He grinned though his chest hurt. "And the student becomes the master. Well-played, Grasshopper."

She lowered herself until their noses touched. "I tried not to love you, but I couldn't stop." She pecked his lips. "And I won't, no matter what happens between us. We'll just have to get through it."

He stroked her face with the back of his fingers. "We'll get through it," he said. Same as the Formans had for over twenty-five years. "I'm in this thing for keeps."

"Can I get that in writing?"

"Eventually," he said, chuckling, and her smile told him she got his meaning. She'd already planned their wedding. Her full description of it was on one of her index cards. "But no harpist. Gotta have a cool rock band."

"Who will play love songs."

"With killer guitar riffs. None of that sappy crooner shit."

"Fine, but you're dancing with me."

"Never a doubt, man." He'd enjoy dancing with her, even if it was to freakin' harp music.

She nestled her head in the crook of his neck. Her palm slid over his chest, and he clasped her hand over his heart. Her and him, they were good. Maybe fate had brought them together, but staying that way would be up to them.


End file.
